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Based on 25 interviews with journalists or program leaders engaged in media and information literacy (MIL) activities, this article explores how these journalistic actors – media, associations and freelancers – engage in MIL, thereby broadening the definition of the profession and the professional identity of journalists. Based on the different types of MIL activities practiced by journalists, this article sets out to understand how these workshops form part of a discourse that legitimizes the profession; from their desire to promote a culture of democracy, to respond to the public’s mistrust of the media and journalists, and to restore meaning to the profession, to communication strategies that include a possible form of “MILwashing” (similar to what exists in the field of sustainable development with greenwashing). Finally, it shows how these players are also driven to invest in MIL activities by regulatory obligations and political and economic incentives, in particular the collective share of the Culture pass, which is helping to transform the conditions under which these MIL activities are carried out, moving from a model based on voluntary work to a “market” in which they are remunerated.