Read All Over

What’s the word on the street? Not much... 

I watch the news. I watch different ones—used to just be 3 channels, but now there are a LOT of them! 

I don’t read the newspaper. I’ll watch the news for a long time, but when I get bored? I will change the channel. 

My favorite topic? I’m not really sure but if I had to pick, I think it would be SPORTS! I enjoy basketball and football. I don’t watch games now but I enjoy viewing the Super Bowl. 

I didn’t play games growing up but always enjoyed watching them. In the 70s there was a team in North Charleston called the Chicora Eagles and I loved seeing them live.  

The Olympics! I followed the Olympics on tv too. I was 14 when they came to LA and I would also watch the Winter Olympics. They used to only come on at night so I had to stay up late to see them. But now, I can view them any time. 

Weather—I also enjoy the weather. It tells you when it’s gonna rain or when there’s gonna be sunshine. I like to be able to plan my week out. Sometimes they [the forecasters] aren’t right—in the summer... thunder showers happen. Sometimes they say it’s not supposed to rain and then it does. We have a little “liquid sunshine.” I really like to go to the beach when there’s sunshine.  

Sometimes when it’s cold you like to stay inside. So, knowing the temperature is a good thing to know what to wear. In my teens, I would watch the news and report what I heard on the tv to my teacher. And, we would talk about the weather. We would talk about how it was supposed to be sunny. But then it would rain. [John says through laughter...] You never know what’s gonna happen. 

I also enjoy the politics of news. I love watching the polls come in on election day. I also enjoy watching the debates, especially the presidential debates. The 80s had many controversial politics and I would watch and hear this come through on the news daily. 

News Anchor? Nah. I didn’t ever have a favorite news reporter neither locally nor nationally, but I would watch whoever was on the screen reporting the news. 

The first major news story I ever remember -- it would’ve been about Clemson. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. But I enjoyed watching them either way. 

HUGO is the most important and largest news story that I can remember. I was 19 and not only did I live through it, but I heard all about it from every news station in town and on the airwaves. When the power went out for the tv we listened to the news coming in on the weather radio. 

The news is important because you can see what’s happening in the world. Some things are good and some are bad. But I like to hear about the spectacular things that happen. 

You hear that people are tired of the news. You don’t really get tired of it you just get tired of hearing the same thing over and over. I just think that news in general when it’s repeated could be boring. 

Should people trust the news media? Some yea and some nay. I say, “YES!” Because they give you the right report and you can be educated. But you also shouldn’t trust the news because they give you the same thing on different stories—a biased viewpoint. People giving their opinion versus fact... might have a good opinion but based on bad facts. But it goes both ways. 

If you don’t know what’s right or wrong... I recommend staying with the good reporters you do trust. You still want to pay attention to take in all the information so you can fact check the people even if you believe you can trust them.  

In order to be informed, you should watch the news. Watch it to see what’s going on and to see what’s happening in real life. [There’s always] something that people need to learn about.

~ John Joyner