Another point of argument is TV is "free" and "omnipresent" so another way to phrase it, is in a country of 314 million people an excellent way to repel over 99% of the population from something widely available and free is to glorify torture.

Lets try a comparison. To remove financial concerns, as a thought experiment a nationwide burger chain could hand out free hamburgers to everyone who wants one. Then you could draw conclusions about levels of vegetarianism/veganism and such that would be untainted by economic concerns. I think this would be insanely popular. So here's a real world experiment in the same tradition, in providing something free to anyone who wants it, and in excess of 99% of the population rejects it, therefore it must somehow in a twisted logic define the values of a culture. Huh?

Their moral compass is right and well spoken, their writing style is pretty good, its just their reasoning and data gathering / reporting is awful. Their conclusion might even accidentally be correct, although not for the reasons they propose. As a philosophy paper they'd get an "A", journalism class would probably give them a "B" or so, but as a hard science lab notebook or paper they'd be skating along the "F" level.

Infotainment/Propaganda, unfortunately. Its too bad, its an interesting topic, and their hearts appear to be in the right place.