Turn Off Your TV?

I saw this tidbit of info on the Canadian Association of Journalists listserv, but I thought I would reproduce it here. It's particularly relevant given my recent hate-on for CBC's The Hour and for excuses made its name, such as "At least it's getting people involved with politics."

From Statcan:

The study found that the level of political engagement Canadians report is influenced by their frequency of news consumption and the choices they make from the media sources available to them.

Frequent followers of the news participate in more political activities. But the GSS data show that the media that people select does influence participation in non-voting political activities.

Those frequent users who chose only television tended to participate in fewer non-voting political activities. In fact, in terms of their involvement, people who used television as their only source of news closely mirrored those who did not follow the news at all.

This finding supports previous US research that lower rates of political participation are associated with using television as the only source of news.