Recent research has employed estimates of media exposure to explore the relationship between information disseminated ‘from above’ and political violence. I argue that those methods involve a potential pitfall, i.e., the possibility that the variable that they measure, media availability, is an inadequate proxy for media consumption, the actual variable of interest. I further argue that researchers often cannot be confident that that proxy is a valid one unless they have a deep qualitative understanding of media consumption habits of the population under study. I illustrate that concern by examining recent research on genocide in Rwanda.