Jul 9 (IANS): The better a politician looks, the higher the frequency of his or her television news coverage. So says a study in Israel that also found that physical appearance has more influence on the amount of coverage for women than men.

"Earlier studies had shown that people generally tend to prefer the company of physically attractive people and even value them as more worthy people," said University of Haifa researchers in Israel.

"Our study reveals that journalists probably behave just like the rest," they noted.

It was found that attractive politicians are covered in TV news more than their less attractive counterparts.

The study, carried out by Yariv Tsfati, Dana Markowitz Elfassi and Israel Waismel-Manor, based on a thesis written by Markowitz Elfassi, explored the association between the physical appearance of politicians and news coverage on TV channels.

They surveyed the coverage of all members of the 16th Israeli Knesset (parliament) on these channels.

These findings were published in the International Journal of Press/Politics.

"Nowadays, publicists and campaigners, as well as politicians themselves, are aware of the importance of media skills," the researchers noted.