I suggest that you review the 2013 NDAA amendment that basically repealed the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibited the U.S. government from disseminating propaganda to the American public. The original intent was to prevent the State Department and its agencies from engaging in domestic propaganda.
One could argue that the changes require that the material be originally intended for foreign consumption, but how does one prove "intent?"
The Smith-Mundt Act was not repealed. It was updated so that content intended for foreign audiences can now be accessed within the U.S. upon request, such as by researchers. The update was necessary because of the global nature of digital information. It became impossible to produce content for foreign audiences that was not also consumed in some way by Americans.
It remains strictly forbidden to use government funds to influence public opinion in the United States.
> Files we obtained, mainly through the US Freedom of Information Act, show that between 1911 and 2017, more than 800 feature films received support from the US Government’s Department of Defence (DoD), a significantly higher figure than previous estimates indicate. These included blockbuster franchises such as Transformers, Iron Man, and The Terminator.
> This partnership comes at a price. In exchange for the use of military personnel and equipment, movie producers must abide by the Pentagon’s strict entertainment policy that grants the DoD final say over a movie’s script. These collaborations frequently require changes to the screenplay that amount to historical revisionism. Spy Culture, the “world's leading resource on government involvement in Hollywood,” has utilized FOIA requests to collect tens of thousands of annotated drafts of film scripts which provide a firsthand glimpse at the breadth of the Pentagon’s influence over the movies we know and love.
