Sources of credible, comprehensive local news have been drying up in rural America over the past 20 years, and people are getting skewed information from other sources, changing rural Americans' political views, writes Dee Davis, publisher of The Daily Yonder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies.
"The change helped get Donald Trump elected," Davis writes. "It helped conservative evangelicals establish themselves as news providers across rural America. And it helps explain why rural people’s understanding of their own self-interest may seem out of sync with what people who get their news in metro media hubs think it should be."
Davis notes the decline in circulation of, and reporting by, major newspapers in his native Appalachia, and writes about a little-known topic, the increasing prevalence of evangelical Christian radio broadcasters. Before 2000, low FM frequencies had been devoted to secular education and nonprofit news. After the law changed, religious broadcasters became a tour de force in rural America, and by 2006 small evangelical radio stations were the second largest radio format in the nation, Davis writes.
"What’s under the radar is that the Christian news feed and other programs are nationalized and weaponized by conservative think tanks and by Evangelical church networks," Davis writes. "Also under the radar is the accounting that shows these radio networks and affiliated institutions have gone glandular monetizing religious radio stations and media support services like news, sermons, and church literature. In 2011 the revenue for Focus on the Family, a service ministry, was reported to be over $95 million."
Social media, too, have created online echo chambers where users find only the news that confirms their biases and friends who share the same opinions. Davis saw the power of social media to mislead during the 2016 presidential election, when several people in Whitesburg, Ky., where he lives, believed a fake story that Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, abused a girl. Though the story was easily proven false, "when you see that the same abuse news story went systematically unchecked to a million voters, you can begin to appreciate the power of emerging news platforms programmed to hunt down gullibility and sidestep candor," Davis writes.
"The change helped get Donald Trump elected," Davis writes. "It helped conservative evangelicals establish themselves as news providers across rural America. And it helps explain why rural people’s understanding of their own self-interest may seem out of sync with what people who get their news in metro media hubs think it should be."
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| Dee Davis (NPR photo) |
"What’s under the radar is that the Christian news feed and other programs are nationalized and weaponized by conservative think tanks and by Evangelical church networks," Davis writes. "Also under the radar is the accounting that shows these radio networks and affiliated institutions have gone glandular monetizing religious radio stations and media support services like news, sermons, and church literature. In 2011 the revenue for Focus on the Family, a service ministry, was reported to be over $95 million."
Social media, too, have created online echo chambers where users find only the news that confirms their biases and friends who share the same opinions. Davis saw the power of social media to mislead during the 2016 presidential election, when several people in Whitesburg, Ky., where he lives, believed a fake story that Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, abused a girl. Though the story was easily proven false, "when you see that the same abuse news story went systematically unchecked to a million voters, you can begin to appreciate the power of emerging news platforms programmed to hunt down gullibility and sidestep candor," Davis writes.
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