A survey of 548 male and female household heads in Columbus, Ohio, was conducted in 1977 to discover the effects of dependency on different media on levels of trust toward government, knowledge about government, and perceived knowledge about government at both local and national levels. It was hypothesized that newspaper dependency is positively associated with increased knowledge, perceived comprehension, and trust at both local and national levels even when controls for age and education are included. It was also hypothesized that television dependency is negatively associated with the same variables. In general, these hypotheses held except that at the national level, knowledge was found to be related to perceived comprehension but not to trust. It appears that age and education do interact with the variables and dependency so that among younger sample members with a low education level, dependency does not produce the effects on knowledge, perceived comprehension, and trust that it does in other sample members. (TJ)