There is a focus here on domestic US television, which is rather simplistic as we are talking about large multi-national corporations. For example, the CNN we see here in Europe is not the same CNN you see in the US, not only much of the content but also the style of reporting can be quite different on CNN here. The same is true to varying degrees of Nat Geographic, the History Channel and Discovery Channels.
I experienced a practical example of this in my own work. About a decade ago I was involved with a high budget documentary series for Discovery Channel. The series was at times highly critical of the UK government and media as well as of the governments and media of a number of European, Middle Eastern and South American countries and also at times of the government of the USA. The series was aired in Europe with a considerable amount of hype but ended up never (AFAIK) being broadcast in the US. Discovery Channel felt that US audiences were not so open to or tolerant of criticism/self criticism and that airing the series in the US could cause a storm of "anti-patriotic" criticism against the channel from the US public, media and politicians.
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I experienced a practical example of this in my own work. About a decade ago I was involved with a high budget documentary series for Discovery Channel. The series was at times highly critical of the UK government and media as well as of the governments and media of a number of European, Middle Eastern and South American countries and also at times of the government of the USA. The series was aired in Europe with a considerable amount of hype but ended up never (AFAIK) being broadcast in the US. Discovery Channel felt that US audiences were not so open to or tolerant of criticism/self criticism and that airing the series in the US could cause a storm of "anti-patriotic" criticism against the channel from the US public, media and politicians.
G