We examine whether the desire for more information is people's dominant motive for reading economic and political news … experimentally vary people's beliefs about the informativeness of news. Inconsistent with the desire for more information being the … information reduce their demand for news from this newspaper. Furthermore, treated respondents who think that a news outlet is …

common Downsian reasoning, rational voters should not be willing to pay for information out of purely instrumental motives … apply when a group of voters shares a common goal such as accountability and information is delivered via mass media. In … instrumental information in these scenarios. Our model thus reconciles the rational voter approach with the common perception of …