G. Sussman et al., SUPPORT FOR TELEVISION COVERAGE OF THE LEGISLATIVE-PROCESS AMONG STATE LEGISLATORS - A COMPARISON OF IOWA, UTAH, AND FLORIDA, Political communication, 12(2), 1995, pp. 193-210
The amount of media coverage of state legislatures varies across the 5
0 states, as do levels of public interest and citizen information abou
t state legislative affairs. In order to assess the attitudes of those
elected officials who would be most directly affected by opening up t
he political process to greater media coverage, survey data were colle
cted from state legislators in Iowa, Utah, and Florida. Representative
s and senators from these three geographically disparate states were a
sked to indicate their level of support for gavel-to-gavel coverage of
their respective state legislatures. The findings of this exploratory
study indicate that this type of media coverage is well supported in
two of the three states, but that the reasons for support differ consi
derably. This diversity indicates the need for further investigation,
in additional state settings, of the dynamics of intrastate politics i
n this area of public policy.