Perhaps a more significant reason for television’s preference for rural over urban Africa is our ongoing romance with the exotic. We consider nature and the life of people with less contact with modern cultures more interesting and more enlightening than studies of everyday modern African life.
This suggests that they come from unconscious bias and cultural preferences rather than misinformation. I think this is true because media tends to prioritize what captures attention over what provides accuracy, and audiences are often unaware of the stereotypes they make.