Twenty-five students recruited from a course in mass media and public opinion conducted telephone interviews with 162 residents of central Florida to assess their knowledge of the official dropping of Senator Eagleton as Senator McGovern's running mate in 1972. The broadcast media and television in particular served as a primary information source. The controversy caused by the actual decision and the events leading up to it during the week disrupted normal media exposure patterns among the majority of respondents. This paper examines these disruptions and finds several major variables significant in affecting news diffusion, including degree of interest in the outcome, actual time when the decision was learned, whether the respondent was a registered voter or not, and actual media reported as source of the news. The paper concludes with a discussion of the spread of information about McGovern's decision and how people attended to media as their normal exposure patterns were interrupted by their interest in this event. (Author/EE)