Leveraging the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone, arguably the world’s most comprehensive database monitoring news media, we derived a list of 58 land conflicts covered by the media and find that 39 of these 58 conflicts are located in urban areas. Thus, while rural areas account for 70 per cent of the actual occurrence of land conflicts, the media reports nearly 67 per cent of such conflicts from urban centres. Not only is the frequency of media reporting on urban conflicts greater, but each urban conflict is also covered much more extensively than those in rural areas; this is despite the fact that a much larger number of people are potentially impacted in the latter.