ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates primary reference to the world's most watched commercial network that control by gatekeepers can operate on several levels. American commercial television is supported by advertising rather than by government subsidies. Censorship can apply to commercial as well as to government-funded or government-run television. Soviet television, via 80 million sets reaching 90 percent of the citizenry, has become a nationally pervasive propaganda tool. American and Brazilian television strive not to train proper citizens, but proper consumers. Globo encourages public opinion feedback by monitoring and evaluating reactions to its novelas. Hirsch finds that American political leaders have little control over the news judgments of broadcast journalists. In 1984 Sao Paulo's independent TV Cultura was sued over a live broadcast of an interview in which a former president called a governor 'a bandit'. American antimonopoly laws have limited media control by prohibiting the same individual or corporation from owning a newspaper and TV station in the same city.
