What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• A report from The Aspen Institute aims to address misguided, preconceived notions about rural America, many of which are shaped by the media.
• How does the media play a large role in shaping public perception? How do preconceived notions about rural America ignore the presence of the Native community? What can you do to shape further research to more accurately portray rural America?
• Learn about why we must not forget rural America in COVID-19 recovery policies.
This report underscores and articulates how ongoing changes in the structure and business of media and journalism contribute to the gap between rural realities and public perception of rural America. It also highlights the outsized role that social media is playing in shaping public perceptions. Interviewees shared their recommendations for overcoming the challenges they identified and for making the most of emerging opportunities. Accordingly, this report provides a set of recommendations that could result in better rural-focused journalism.
As the pandemic continues, rural communities will likely face unprecedented challenges as a result of more elderly people in their communities, drastically limited access to hospitals and critical medical supplies, higher rates of serious, chronic medical conditions, and economies that are less diversified than urban communities—and that are still not fully recovered from the 2009 recession.
And in the midst of it all, national media companies are laying off employees and cutting print days for smaller publications.
We knew last year that it was important to better understand and represent rural communities in news coverage, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made this work more urgent than ever before.
Read the full report on preconceived notions about rural America at The Aspen Institute.
For the purposes of this report, we are not concerned with a specific definition of rural, but importantly, when we say ‘rural’ we are referring to a rural that includes Tribal Nations and communities located in rural regions of the U.S. Instead of a specific definition of rural, we rely on our interviewees’ knowledge of rural and tribal communities to confer their personal experience, understanding and perceptions of the term. For the purposes of this report and any discussion of rural people, places, policy, and media, it is wise to acknowledge the core truth that rural conditions vary widely; the same holds true for the hundreds of Tribal Nations and communities in the U.S.