normally i listen to CNN or Headline News about an hour a day
and then i supplement that with uh
radio news
from my car radio
and from a news magazine
once a week
do you
and a newspaper if i have time
yeah i don't usually have time to read the newspaper everyday
so i try to listen to the radio in the morning and and try to catch one of the morning talk shows
and then i usually end up flipping through CNN and Headline News during the evening
i always try to read the Sunday paper
just because it usually gives a summary of the the week's hot events
so i try to i try to catch that if nothing else
that's true and and how do you rate the uh how are you pleased with the news coverage that you're receiving
for for local news i think we do real well where it's we live in a kind of small town
but i think we get excellent local coverage um
and i like the national news that we see we we watch NBC and i think they do a real good job
so i'm i've been real pleased with the quality of the news we get
how about you
on the whole i'm pleased when i have an opportunity to hear just the facts i would much prefer that they keep their analysis to themselves
um
since i don't necessarily agree with it or it tends to be extraordinarily trite
right
uh i think i'm fed up with trite
there seems to be more and more of it
and i understand the void that uh comes naturally with both
radio presentations and television presentations and as as expensive as they are to produce they certainly don't want any dead airspace
uh-huh
yeah
but i think there's enough news out there that they could pass on more factual information to us and like you said save the commentaries
because i'm going to listen to the the news and draw my own opinions
i don't really need their help to do that
i i we're certainly in agreement there
i don't think radio is as bad to do that as TV is
uh
radio seems to have a full platter or full plate of different things that they need to get done they're maybe they're a little more efficient
um-hum
or have more to do over that same time frame i don't know which that answer is
right
uh i think the
my greatest complaint about news programs is programs like Sixty Minutes do you watch that
i used to but i don't anymore maybe once or twice a year
well i used to watch Sixty Minutes until they did
two programs uh that i knew
both the people and the incidences incidences
uh-huh
and i knew that they had presented an extremely slanted viewpoint
really
that was in my estimate nowhere near truth but was much better for ratings
yes
and it ever since that time i just don't watch
uh so i guess we have the the same reaction whether we came about it from the same place or not
yeah
well i had heard a couple of people
you know that i had talked to about certain programs say that you know they had read other things besides what Sixty Minutes presented
and that they didn't present it nearly the same way
as the you know news articles or whatever they had they had already been familiar with
so i started questioning
just how how bias they really were
so
i don't know did i don't know how old you are but it seems to me like the last uh newscaster that presented news in just the nice simple factual way that i wanted to hear was Walter Cronkite
hum
so i don't i don't know if you're familiar with him or not
no not really you know in the last few years just his
kind of informal segments i've seen but i never got to see his actual nightly news i liked i i did grow up with David Brinkley
well Brinkley was sort of trying to be in the mold
uh
uh-huh
of Cronkite and he did a a pretty good job The Huntley Brinkley Report was quite excellent over the years
yeah we we used to watch um him and i guess John Chancellor
and i always liked David Brinkley and i and i used to enjoy John Chancellor's style of reporting
but on the nightly news now he goes into his commentary and that's where i get get into the problem with with him i frequently disagree with his commentaries
so
well once they've reported the facts all they can offer is an opinion anymore
right
what did you think of the news coverage of the war
well i almost felt like it was too much indeed i found myself restricting my viewing to a couple of hours a day one in the morning and one in the evening
um-hum
uh
i spent a number of years in the service as an intelligence analyst
really
and i don't need their
fill-ins you know
did that help you understand a lot what was going on your your prior experience with the military
did
yes but i i think it helps me everyday in trying to review
what the state that the world is in and try to guess where we're going
i wondered if it would help you sometimes fill-in the gaps or recognize
discrepancies that other people people like myself might not pick up on
well i i think uh my background is probably what absolutely turned me off with Sixty Minutes
okay
what weekly um magazine do you look at is it
i like US News and World Report at one time or another i've
taken them all for a year i believe in giving anything a chance
uh-huh
sure
uh but i keep coming back to that one
so i that's kind of my favorite
does it give a pretty good overview of everything or like does it give um i guess little encapsulated reports and and then a few big stories
it's primarily um a few big stories
and then lots of high-level reports
yeah
uh here's what went on in Asia over the past week and there's maybe a page of that little brief paragraphs
unless that was one of their the focus of their main stories
that sounds good if you were short on time you could get a summary real quick
uh it too is one those you know in the interest of efficiency we all have to find ways and i do most of my reading in the bathroom
right
um and it's one of those that i can either read either an article or a couple of pages of those brief excerpts in the time frame that i'm going to spend in there
right
and it just seems to fit nicely so that i can get it read in about three days
well we're working on a Newsweek
uh for the last couple of months we got you know an introductory sub scription so we decided to try it because prior to that all we got were things like
Glamour or Sports Illustrated so we decided to try to bring one in that was
a little bit better for us so to speak
well to broaden your horizons make you think about different things anyway
it can't hurt
well anytime that we stop and think it can't hurt
no
i i even i enjoy reading T News
i try to catch it
because it's another example they just they just show you the words and the facts
and they they don't offer any commentary and it gives me a quick chance to to be caught up during the day
because you know we don't listen to the radio at work at all
so i don't like to go the whole day without hearing anything
oh i'm with you i have to check T News every everyday
it's my noontime dose of facts
yeah
and the other thing we have that i like to check sometimes is um Talking Fingers do you have that
no
you have different telephone numbers that you can dial and then you dial in an access code
and it will depending on what topic you called in to hear about whether it was the news or the weather or a soap opera update
it will give you um updated information
so it can give you you know current news updates current weather updates things like that and it's it's offered through the local phone company free of charge
hum
so that's an interesting alternative occasionally that i like to use
well it does sound very interesting maybe our phone company out here will get around to offering something like that
it
it really is yeah it really is nice i mean because it gives you a wide variety of things you can call and talk and find out about
so that is something you might keep your eyes open for i think it's it's catching on throughout the country
