Rural Journalism Collective hosts election-year reporting webinar: Thursday, June 20, 2 p.m., E.T.

The Rural Journalism Collective is hosting a free webinar with tips on how journalists can tell more accurate stories about rural voters. The webinar will be held on Thursday, June 20, at 2 p.m., E.T. You can register here.

Session panelists include Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies; Pauly Denetclaw, political correspondent for ICT; and Cathy Darling Allen, registrar of voters and Shasta County clerk in rural California.

As Americans head into the final months before November elections, rural journalists can help their communities fine-tune their political voices while supporting poll workers and election officials throughout the election cycle.

The discussion will touch on voter polling conducted by the Center for Rural Strategies, Native and Indigenous voters, and how journalists can use their reporting to lead their communities through the democratic process.

Roundup for World Press Freedom Day: Americans think news media hurt democracy; journalists concerned about press freedoms; site picked for Fallen Journalists Memorial

Associated Press chart refers to "the news media" as singular, which is not helpful. --Al Cross, Institute for Rural Journalism

Most Americans think the news media are hurting democracy and driving political polarization in the United States, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. "Four in 10 say the press is doing more to hurt American democracy, while only about 2 in 10 say the press is doing more to protect it," AP reports. "Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults say the news media is increasing political polarization in this country, and just under half say they have little to no trust in the media’s ability to report the news fairly and accurately. . . . That breakdown in trust may prompt many Americans to reject the mainstream news media, often in favor of social media and unreliable websites that spread misleading claims and that can become partisan echo chambers, leading to further polarization."

AP's David Klepper adds, "The survey reveals the complicated relationship many Americans have with the media: A majority rate in-depth and investigative reporting as very helpful or extremely helpful for understanding the issues they care about, but they are more likely to say they regularly scan the headlines than read an in-depth investigative article. And while overall trust in the media is low, a majority of respondents say the media is doing at least somewhat well in covering issues they care about." The poll of 1,002 adults was conducted March 30 through April 3 using a sample from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. NORC stands for the former name of the National Opinion Research Center.

On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, May 3, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the news media are under attack all over the world and "urged all nations to stop the targeting of truth and those who report it," AP reports. "Guterres said the collapse of the media industry, which has led to closures of local news outlets and consolidation of media 'into the hands of the few' is threatening freedom of expression." World Press Freedom Day was first proclaimed by the U.N. General Assembly in December 1993.

Pew Research Center graph

"Most journalists in the United States are concerned about the future of press freedoms in the country, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey of nearly 12,000 working U.S.-based journalists," Pew reports. "These concerns come at a time when the U.S. ranks 42nd in the world in press freedom, according to a 2022 analysis by Reporters Without Borders, and as some journalists face harassment or threats of arrest." The poll found that concern increases with age and with experience in journalism.

A site on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., has been approved for "the capital’s first memorial dedicated to journalists who have died while reporting the news and to the role of the free press in a democracy," The Washington Post reports. The Fallen Journalists Memorial will be be built between the National Museum of the American Indian and the Voice of America building, at Independence and Maryland avenues and Third Street SW. "The site, which has a direct view of the Capitol, was chosen to evoke journalists’ role as government watchdogs," the Post reports. "The memorial is projected to open in 2028 and will cost as much as $50 million, which will be entirely funded by private donations. Officials said they have commitments to cover 40 percent of the cost so far."

Media mogul Robert Allbritton says he has committed $20 million to launch a non-profit educational newsroom that will train reporters in fact-based, non-partisan journalism on government and politics. The Allbritton Journalism Institute will offer a free, two-year fellowship, starting in September, and fellows will be paid $60,000 per year as they work with reporters and editors to produce a digital news publication launching this fall, a press release said. Allbritton, the founder of Politico, said “The path to a strong republic flows through reliable news and information, and that starts with the way journalists are recruited and trained.” AJI's executive director is Tim Grieve, the founding editor of Politico Pro and Protocol; editors include Richard Just, the former editor of The Washington Post Magazine, National Journal magazine and The New Republic. Instructors and mentors include Tim Alberta, a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. Applicants may apply on the Institute’s website, www.aji.org. The deadline is May 31. Professional journalists interested in working with AJI should contact Grieve at tim@aji.org.

Rural residents in 4 of 5 countries studied, including U.S., are less trusting of the news media than city dwellers are

How the general trust in news media differs among four major nations.
Reuters Institute chart; click the image to enlarge it.

It's not just an American phenomenon: the Reuters Institute's latest Trust in News report found that, in four of the five countries studied, rural residents trust the news significantly less than city dwellers. But that distrust may be part of a larger pattern, since rural residents are generally less trusting (as are older people, those without college degrees, and whites, groups that are more prevalent in the rural U.S.).

In the U.S., 40 percent of rural residents were "generally untrusting toward news" compared to 16% of urban residents. Conservative political affiliation is an especially significant indicator of news media distrust in the U.S. as well, according to the report.

However, it's worth noting that most respondents said they trust some news sources more than others, and definitions of what qualifies as "news" vary.

Americans who generally don't trust news media were much less likely than other Americans to agree that familiarity with a news brand affects how much they trust it. In short, that suggests "that the generally untrusting as a group are somewhat less confident in their ability to differentiate between sources, and that may contribute to a lack of trust overall," the report says. "The untrusting not only say they pay less attention to journalists’ backgrounds and the editorial practices individual news outlets embrace, they also put less stock in the way brands present themselves or whether familiarity is even a useful indicator of trustworthiness. On average they trust few or no brands, not because they are particularly discerning but because they are less knowledgeable about what separates one brand from the next and may lack the motivation or interest to find out."

Where is vaccine hesitancy and resistance strongest? Two new tools can tell you; one even goes to Zip code level

It's easy to find your locality's coronavirus vaccination rate, but what about its vaccine hesitancy rate, or local interest in vaccination? Two new interactive tools reveal those numbers. One uses data gathered by polling done through Facebook; the other shows the relative interest in vaccination shown by online searches. 

The Facebook-gathered data are in interactive maps from the University of Washington, showing what counties (and even what Zip codes) are most hesitant to get a shot. The maps by the university's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation reflect answers to this question: "If a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 were offered to you today, would you choose to get vaccinated?" The answers are "Definitely," "Probably," "Probably not" and "Definitely not." People giving one of the last three answers are considered vaccine-hesitant.

The maps do not break down the data by individual answers, but are interactive, and can be switched to show the percentage of people saying "Probably" and "Probably not." That allows simple subtraction to produce the "Definitely not" figure for each area. 

Another tool, called Google Covid-19 Vaccination Search Insights, uses aggregated, anonymized data from Google searches about vaccination. The weekly data are available by region and by county. 

The trends reflect relative interest, broken down three ways: overall interest, vaccination intent, and safety and side effects. Click here to learn more about how the researchers process the data. 

The Google tool also has trends for each county. For example, searches showing interest and intent to get vaccinated increased in lightly vaccinated Spencer County, Kentucky, between June 21 and June 28, when the state announced a $1 million lottery for vaccinated residents.

Google graph shows searches in Spencer County, Kentucky, June 21-28.

Pew poll shows little worry about news-media finances; compares 99 media markets on journalism performance

Despite years of news stories about the troubles of newspapers, and recent research showing that 1,800 (almost all of them weeklies) closed from 2004 to 2015, a strong majority of Americans think that “their local news outlets are doing very or somewhat well financially,” according to polling by the Pew Research Center. Amy Mitchell, Pew’s executive editor of journalism research, in a briefing last week that the industry attempt to educate consumers “seems to largely have gone unheard,” Laura Hazard Owen reports for Nieman Lab at Harvard University. But most people say they get their news from television, and there has been little news about TV finances. Pew says, "A third of those who prefer print think their local news media are not doing well financially."

Pew also found that only 14 percent of American adults "have paid for or given money to local news of any kind — print, digital, public-radio pledge drive, anything — in the past year," Owen reports. "Inside the news industry and Nieman Lab World, the fate of local news stands out as a particularly scary problem. Outside our bubble, however, people aren’t all that worried about it."

The poll surveyed about 35,000 people, which allowed Pew to create an interactive tool "that lets users delve into the local news environments in 99 regions across the U.S.," Owen reports. These are "core-based statistical areas," which omit some exurban counties that are in metro areas, but still include counties with rural populations, and market-to-market comparisons can be interesting. The Rural Blog found some in the two markets with which we're most familiar: Lexington and Louisville.

Metro areas for which Pew media polling data are available

In the Louisville metro area, which lies partly in Indiana, the six most important news topics for daily life are the weather (66 percent), crime (39%), prices (37%), traffic and transportation (36%), government and politics (25%) and schools (16%). When those who said a topic was important or merely interesting were asked how easy it is to stay informed about it, the "very easy" percentages were: weather 82, sports 54, traffic and transport 47, crime 43, schools 35, jobs and unemployment 25, prices 22, community activities 22, arts and culture 22, restaurants, clubs and bars 21, and government and politics 20. In the nearby Lexington market, that last figure was 44 percent, ranking fifth, just as it did among the importance of topics (in Lexington and nationally). Those disparities suggest that there is more appetite for news of government and politics than many news media in Louisville think. In both markets, TV is the leading news provider, but there's a big difference in pathways; 53 percent in Louisville say they get their news from TV, 20 percent from a news site or app, and 10 percent each from print and social media. In Lexington, social media edge out TV, 29 to 27, and the other pathways are tied at 17 percent.

The poll also asked whether local journalists are in touch with the community, whether local news media have a lot of influence, and if the respondent had spoken with a local journalist. Comparisons of these numbers across markets should be interesting. Questions about news-media performance included accuracy, thoroughness, fairness, transparency about reporting and "keeping an eye on local political leaders." Then the poll asked how well local news media do at keeping them informed of the important stories of the day.  Here are the grades for Louisville and Lexington:

Resentment of coastal elites, much of it rural, still motivates Trump voters, according to three new reports

By Al Cross

Director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

A resentment of coastal elites is a key to the support that President Trump still enjoys in parts of the country that abandoned their usual Democratic allegiances for him in 2016. That's a thread that runs through three recent in-depth reports: one by a Democratic pollster, one by The Washington Post's chief political reporter, and the other by a conservative journalist who was one of the leaders in defining the who and why of Trump voters before the election.

Much of this resentment is in among Americans, as I outlined in a speech to a rural-education conference last week and in a chapter for a book, The Trump Presidency, Journalism and Democracy, published by Routledge in Februrary. The latest reports are by pollster Stan Greenberg, on voters in suburban Macomb County, Michigan; the Post's Dan Balz, who reported from rural counties along and near the upper Mississippi River; and Salena Zito, who with Republican operative Brad Todd wrote The Great Revolt, a new book based on "10 counties they studied across the five states that tipped the election to Trump, as the Post's James Hohman describes it in the paper's "Daily 202."

Here's what Michael Martin of Erie, Pa., told the authors: “Live in a small or medium-sized town, and you would think we were dragging the country down. We aren’t a country just made up of large metropolitan areas. Our politics and our culture up until now has dictated that we are less than in the scale of importance and value.” That is reflected in much of the national news media, based mainly on the East Coast, and resentment of media portrayals is a big part of the attitudes of rural voters, who gave at least 62 percent of their votes to Trump, a record.

Zito and Todd note "a polarization between those who live in dense cosmopolitan communities with higher-than-average education levels and those who live in rural, exurban and industrial locales that, as a rule, have . . . lower-than-average education levels and less transience." Four of the 10 counties where they did interviews are rural; evangelical voters are represented largely by rural Howard County, Iowa, where Obama got 62 and 59 percent of the vote and Trump got 58.

Greenberg has long studied “Reagan Democrats” in Macomb County, "which Trump won by 12 points after Barack Obama carried it twice, including by 16 points in 2008," Hohmann notes. “Trump voters complain that there is no respect for President Trump or for people like them who voted for him,” Greenberg writes in a new memo summarizing his latest findings, with Nancy Zdunkewicz of Democracy Corps. “A healthy diet of Fox News is feeding the white working-class men fending off the challenges of Trump’s opponents, including those within their own families. They … feel vindicated that a businessman like Trump has produced a strong macro-economy and kept his promises on immigration. They continue to appreciate how he speaks his mind, unlike a typical politician.”

Balz's report was illustrated by the map above, which also shows how reliably Republican the overall rural vote has become. "One reason Balz’s piece is great is that it’s longitudinal: It tracks in a nuanced way how specific people’s attitudes about Trump have shifted gradually since he took office," Hohmann reports. "The best illustration is Kurt Glazier, 50, from Sterling, Ill.," population 15,000. Balz visited him four times. "He’s a state worker, a union member and chairman of the Republican Party in Whiteside County. . . . By midsummer of 2017, Glazier had growing concerns about Trump. . . .Near the first anniversary of the president taking office, Glazier worried especially that those who voted for Trump are now viewed by others as therefore being like Trump. . . . Glazier drew a distinction between the staunchest Trump supporters and other Republicans – like him."

Glazier told Balz, “I think the real party faithful, the educated voters, might be beginning to distance themselves from him, and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a Republican challenger or challengers against Trump. They wanted so much of a change. But he has some changing to do himself before I would be supportive of him again. … A 71-year-old man like he is, I don’t foresee him changing a whole lot.”

Gun owners' opinions about firearms and gun laws depend partly on whether they're urban or rural

Gun owners have different experiences and opinions about gun laws, depending on whether they live in urban, suburban or rural areas, the Pew Research Center has found in its polling.

Gun ownership is much more common in rural areas (58 percent of rural households report having a firearm), and "gun owners in rural areas are far more likely than urban owners to cite hunting as a major reason they own a gun (48 percent vs. 27 percent, respectively)," Ruth Igielnik reports for Pew. "Rural gun owners also tend to become gun owners at an earlier age," and "Americans who grew up in rural areas are more likely to have grown up with guns in their homes."

Those numbers help explain how firearms are a part of rural culture, which associates the right to own guns with a personal sense of freedom. In rural areas, 82 percent of gun owners "say the right to own guns is essential to their personal sense of freedom, compared with 59 percent of gun owners in urban areas,' Igielnik reports.

"One notable similarity between rural and urban gun owners is how they store their guns. Similar shares of gun owners in rural areas (56 percent) and urban communities (51 percent) say there is a gun that is both loaded and easily accessible to them all or most of the time when they are home."

Recent trends, and Obama's presidency, have made supporting gun rights about more than guns

Many gun-control advocates don't understand the motivations of their opponents, write Jim Tankersley and Scott Clement of The Washington Post, citing polling data.

"Supporting gun rights, for a large portion of Americans, is about much more than guns," they report, citing several factors: "A backlash against government intrusion into individuals' lives . . . a belief that more guns make us safer" and "the rise of gun laws as a partisan issue (seen in poll graphic, above) after Barack Obama was elected president."

Tankersley and Clement write, "It's important to note that some tighter gun-control measures enjoy wide support across America, among liberals and conservatives, gun owners and even National Rifle Association households as well as those who have never pulled a trigger. More than 4 in 5 Americans support requiring background checks for private and gun-show firearms sales, and nearly as many favor laws preventing people with mental illness from owning guns, Pew Research surveys have found. Seven in 10 support a federal database of gun sales. Over half support bans on semi-automatic and assault weapons."

Still, "defending gun rights is a more popular position now than it has been in almost 20 years," the reporters note: "Half of Americans now say it is more important to 'protect the right of Americans to own guns' than it is to 'control gun ownership.'"

Self-selected media polls need to remind readers and viewers that they are not scientific

By Al Cross, Director
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Our friend Ed Henninger writes a very good column for newspapers about design and layout on his site, and we recommend it to editors. Ed's latest column, about the value of running reader polls on opinion pages, has many good ideas, including the chart above (click on it for a larger version), but I think he left one out.

Reader polls are not the same as the public-opinion polls normally reported in newspapers and other media. The latter polls are based on some type of scientifically generated random sample and usually conducted under accepted standards designed to make the polls as reliable as possible—in other words, to be an accurate reflection of public opinion at the time they are taken.

Reader polls don't work that way. They are self-selected, meaning that the sample is determined by the people who want to give their opinion. Thus, they are not scientific and may not be an accurate reflection of public opinion. Most readers and viewers probably don't realize that, but news outlets rarely tell them. By failing to do that, the outlets are not being fully honest with them.

I recommend that any news outlet running a reader poll include this disclaimer or something like it: "Because the sample for this poll is self-selected, it is not a scientific survey and may not be an accurate reflection of general public opinion." Or, simply use this label: "Not a scientific poll." Or something that fits, as shown in the revised version of Ed's poll chart, above.

If you're a journalist, you don't need to have a phobia about math; here are resources to help you

Help is available for math-phobic journalists who need to tackle math to write stories. "Whether it’s reading a government-produced spreadsheet, calculating percentage changes or judging the results of complex academic studies, journalists often must confront the world of math, like it or not," John Wihbey reports for Journalist's Resource, a service of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Wihbey offers these resources:

• Try the classic “Mathematics Competency Test for Journalists,” developed by Philip Meyer of the University of North Carolina, author of The New Precision Journalism, Educators can find a version of the test without answers here.
• Key areas in business and politics often present challenges for general assignment reporters in terms of knowing what’s relevant and detecting underlying data problems. For examples, see “Reading Economic Data Releases from the Government,” by Chris Roush at UNC. Likewise, because knowledge of polling, survey methods and error margins is crucial, see “Polling Fundamentals and Concepts: An Overview for Journalists.”
• For a more advanced understanding of terminology at higher levels of analysis, review “Statistical Terms Used in Research studies: A Primer for Media.”
• The Centre for Investigative Journalism has produced a helpful report, “Statistics for Journalists,” which examines issues such as how averages can mislead and “regression to the mean.” Authored by Connie St. Louis, City University, London.
• Robert Niles also provides a very helpful general resource with “Statistics Every Writer Should Know.”
• To get in the mode of thinking more empirically, check out this fun take on “What Headlines Would Look Like If We Lived in a Mathematically Literate World.”
• Then see “Math Basics for Journalists: Working with Averages and Percentages,” from Journalist’s Resource. It’s a quick refresher.
• Interpreting and writing about academic studies can be tricky. For useful insights, see “Interpreting Academic Studies: A Primer for Media,” also from Journalist’s Resource.
• To get a taste of how quantitative researchers use data, check out “Regression Analysis: A Quick Primer for Media on a Fundamental Form of Data Crunching.” It takes you through a basic technique researchers use to look at the relationship between variables.
• It’s worth remembering that even some of the best data-driven journalism practitioners sometimes fall short of achieving true scientific rigor. The University of Miami’s Alberto Cairo writes at Nieman Lab about how data journalism still needs to “up its own standards.”
• Finally, some problems go well beyond simple numerical errors and ultimately come down to flaws in logic, inference and causality. For a rigorous overview of how to build an explanatory theory, see “Guide to Critical Thinking, Research, Data and Theory: Overview for Journalists.”