Foxnews

Foxnews is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who has run a lot of television in the US for the past few decades. The cable channel is provided by cable TV and satellite TV. The broadcasting giant also runs popular TV shows, such as The Simpsons and back in my day of more TV watching, House (played by Hugh Laurie). With the popular shows, people are already tuned to Fox. Fox Sports is very popular. Not exactly ESPN, but a lot of viewers. Fox has one show I currently watch Hulu.

Many rural people rely on satellite TV for news and entertainment. Foxnews and regular Fox. Older people in cities may have some sort of Internet for the most essential use, or rely on help by their relatives to deal with the things they need to sign up for. Surprisingly, some have got used to cell phones so they get a lot of family news and essential things like weather from the smart phone, but still have not got to using the Internet widely and for anything more than headline news. The map if Internet use shows may Southern and Red states with less use. Surprisingly, some Red states like Idaho and Wyoming have good coverage. There are large parts of those states with low population, so there are in fact people with no internet, but those in the small number of cities (Boise etc.) outnumber them.

States like NE, SD and Iowa as well as Texas rely heavily on satellite TV for the news feed.

So then we come to Foxnews itself. It dominates both cable and satellite TV.

Even California and the East Coast, where MSNBC and CNN dominate, can't quite outdo Fox. If you add up those two, it is roughly the equal of Foxnews. One factor involved here is that the more "college educated" people have given up on TV news. They can get news on line and then watch Netflix and Hulu entertainment with no streaming live feed for the TV.

Tucker Carlson is the most extreme of the Trump supporting hosts on Forxnews. Chris Wallace certainly isn't.  Carlson reinforces the ideas that his conspiracy theory believing audience always wanted to believe. Immigrants are bad, the election was stolen and vaccination for Covid is dangerous. In addition the wearing of masks seems to rob the viewers of "freedom." School board meetings are full of Foxnews fans complaining about the mandates. Carlson's show has the best slot in evening "news," if you can call it news, at 8PM.

It's difficult to believe that he is getting away with this. But either the audience is entertained by this or has been brain washed by Trump supporting web sites, radio and the other sources of misinformation.

Lately he has been promoting a documentary that attempts to prove that the January 6 insurrection was a false flag operation, probably planned by the FBI. it's purpose was to get rid of Trump once and for all. But the impeachment failed, so we are still stuck erasing Trump from our politics.  He will faade away after the 2022 election and then be only part of the 2024 election. Trump is torn, he does not like to lose, and he wants revenge. But he had no fun being a president other than at his rallies.

The Foxnews phenomenon has been with us as a main problem for over a decade. When we had the 2008 financial crisis, Foxnews was able to spin it as a problem of too much government, when it really was a lack of control of the financial sector. Anat Shenker-Osorio explained it in her 2012 book Don't Buy It:

When Rural America Starts to Change

 Congresswoman Boebert gave a speech and fundraiser in La Plata County, on the Southern edge of Colorado. She lost the county in 2020, 57% to 42%. These are the people that came to hear her.

They appear to be a mix of working folks and small businessmen plus some ranchers. Rural people in farming do not see any advantage to the Build back Better plans of Biden. They only care about federal support of farming, roads and transportation. The Democrats from the county would look exactly the same.

The support for Trump does not seem to be anywhere near the same as in Texas. Texas has a huge population and whites still determine the politics. In the SW, the native American population as well as Latinos have some say, as they are a good portion of the population. Here the mix is only almost 90% white. But the 10% Latino is a significant number. They have been seeking an identity for decades. Some as business owners identify as Republican. Some of those businesses are not that well to do, and it may be tough balance to work with wages, taxes and all. This is not Silicon Valley. Minimum wage is all some of them can afford for their employees. Many are probably on Obamacare as the small end of business (not national chains) provide no benefits.

So the business people are probably Republicans, but not Trumpers. They get along with their local Democrats. Durango, the major city, is a tourist attraction. Tourist towns tend to keep politics out of the public view. Mearby there is a national park, Mesa Verde.

The past of the county included mining as an industry. Land use is mainly agriculture and tourism. There is no oil here, so it is never going to look like Texas.

Biden won the county 58% to 40%. This county is more like the future of America than Texas or Iowa.