Study Says Looks Matter as TV Covers Congress

Maybe looks aren’t everything, but new research suggests that more physically attractive members of Congress get more coverage on network television.

Two Israeli professors concluded that members whom a student survey judged to be better looking appeared more frequently on television — but not radio or in newspapers. The researchers argued that the networks were trying to attract larger audiences. “In an ideal democracy, the amount of news coverage representatives receive should be determined by the quality of their work and the originality of their ideas,” the professors wrote. Instead, they said, the networks were compromising “the democratic principle of equal access to the public sphere.” The study, by Prof. Israel Waismel-Manor and Prof. Yariv Tsfati of the University of Haifa, appears in the current edition of the journal Political Communication.