Effects of televised government censorship disclaimers on memory and thought elaboration during the Gulf War

An experiment investigated if graphic censorship disclaimers affect memory or thought elaboration for television news stories of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Viewer assessment of the credibility of censored news also was considered. Subjects listed their thoughts about each story, and their memory was tested as recognition latency. Subjects who rated the credibility of censored news as moderate scored highest on the memory task, but listed the fewest number of negative mentions about the government named as censor in the stories. Under some conditions, results show that the more viewers thought about the source of the censorship, the lesser they remembered images from the stories.