I found studies showing that television in lieu of newspapers correlates negatively --- but that's a direct comparison between people who read the paper and watch news. The same studies showed little or no effect versus people that didn't consume the news at all.

My search was cursory (I was just surprised by your claim and checked it), but (a) the results appears to point in the opposite direction to your claim and (b) sort of misses the point of the 'tzs parent comment.