However, those newspapers who had stood up for the truth had won their "spurs in the struggle and it does give you the right to be as critical as you wish now that we are a free and democratic country".
Tutu was delivering the keynote address at a Commonwealth Press Union Editor's forum at the University of the Western Cape.
While some newspapers were now quite brave in criticising the new government, in the old days they were "very coy about saying boo to a goose".
He too had run the gauntlet of "some of these new converts to freedom" when he was an active campaigner for sanctions against the apartheid government, Tutu said.
"It is all a matter of credibility ... it is a bit thick for someone suddenly to be a paragon of virtue criticising alleged government incompetence and corruption when they were so conspicuous by their deafening silence in the face of the ghastly awfulness and excesses of the past."
Journalists who had achieved the credibility to criticise should also be as quick to praise government when it did well, he said.
Criticism from those who were prepared to offer praise when it was due was "experienced differently from that coming from those who are perceived as carping, as never seeing any good in those being tongue lashed metaphorically speaking".
Tutu said this is why he was able to criticise Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale for his "gutter level outburst" against expelled ANC MP Bantu Holomisa and tell deputy president Thabo Mbeki that the government had "boobed badly over Sarafina II".
"They can take that criticism because it comes from someone who tells them when they have done well," Tutu said.
Tutu who is head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it was also interesting that Afrikaans newspapers like Burger and Rapport were unable to describe the commission's work reasonably objectively.
"They decided ages ago that the TRC was a witch-hunt, an instrument of the ANC to wreak revenge on Afrikaners, and a total waste of money."
These newspapers were not about to be influenced by facts as they made up their mind long ago and "it is going to take an earthquake to shift them".
On possible government interference in a free press, Tutu said there was no evidence that ANC would be immune from the temptation to try and ride roughshod over opposition, to avoid scrutiny or seek to not be accountable.
"They need you to help them resist such temptation."
He would fight to ensure South Africa had a free press.
"I would be willing to toyi-toyi with you were that ever to be necessary. I would be ready to become again the Marchbishop of Cape Town."