American companies do this when it’s easier to ignore hundreds of millions of people than it is to respect people’s privacy

Or, when their scope is entirely local and they don't have the capacity to simultaneously master all the world's laws in every sovereign nation with access to the Internet.

Two imaginary thought from people at wgntv.com:

1. a quick legal risk assessment showed that an international lawsuit against us on US ground, since we don't operate in their country, lawsuit to apply their local laws on US juridiction, is a lawsuit whose the risk that we could loose is very real and we should take measures to block traffic.

2. Someone asked about legal implication of International traffic. No idea. Let's block everything non-US just to be sure, I'm not sure those people exist anyway.

Seems like there’s a startup opportunity to create a box these orgs can buy that splits off the non-US traffic and serves privacy-preserving content with only (localized) Google ads to increase your ad revenue (maybe) a few percent.

I’m from southamerica and I can access the article. They must be explicitly blocking Europe

Yes, actually, after thoughts I suspect that wgntv.com is just using third party provider that operates in europe and asks wgntv.com to implement GDPR compliance or refuse traffic by contract.

Wonder when they'll start blocking visitors from California.