Findings from the meta-analysis of twenty year of media action evaluations are presented. They show the ambivalence of sustainability in this field. Even though the discoursediscourse-internal structures are more contrasted than expected, the results raise the question of an illusion of sustainability and a mistrust or a distrust in the future. The assessment of sustainability tends to add normativity to normativity, driven by a short term, Western-centric and expansionist focus, under the guise of an emancipatory objective.