A failure to communicate

A Darn Friend writes:

You may have heard the tragic news of the death of two eight year old girls in Zion, IL. Zion is the town in which I was raised.

While listening to Fox News (while waiting for an elevator at work) the female anchor was interviewing someone and asked a question like the following "since this town was founded as a religious community in the early 1900's has it been difficult to get information out of the town?"

I always found Zion's history interesting.

But, even as a child in the '70s I knew that Zion had been sociologically absorbed into the Chicago metropolitan area. I found the anchor's question amusing since the thought of 20,000 people living a life in no way isolated from the broader economy\transportation system\communication system\etc . . . and could in some way maintain a distinctive sense of community is pretty amazing . . . .

Not only amazing, but perhaps slightly offensive.

So here's the set-up. Scrap all the Red-State/Blue-State stuff. What lack of understanding is evident here? Is it that the coasts can never understand the heartland? Is it that the media elites -- whether conservative or liberal -- can't understand the common folk? Or is that the secularists -- whether conservative or liberal -- will never properly understand religious people?

Or is it something else?