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Television news is routinely blamed for a decline in political knowledge and for a deepening cynicism among the American electorate. Yet studies attempting to measure the effects of TV news have produced decidedly mixed results. This study, using survey data from a 1994 U.S. Senate campaign in Missouri, finds that using TV news for political and government information is positively associated with knowledge about candidates and not associated with cynicism toward politicians. These results run counter to the popular notion that TV news induces “videomalaise” among viewers.
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Leshner et al. (1997) studied this question.
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