Duo Podcasting Stories

Duo Podcasting Rules (Not a Draw Event)

This event combines the rules of Radio Broadcast Journalism, Duo Interpretation, and the imaginations of the BHS Debate Squad. The rules for the event are as follows:

1. Time: 5:30-6:00 minutes, no “Grace period. No time signals provided Contestants may time themselves. A timing violation will result in being dropped one rank by the judge.

2. Performance: This speech must include a minimum of three pieces of news. The speech shall be a news broadcast with an original commercial of no fewer than 30 seconds and an editorial commentary about 1 or more of their news items. Commentary for this event will be defined as: comments about their chosen news articles. This may include an impact to their podcast channel, interest their character(s) may have in the story, why this story is on the show, etc.

3. Procedure: Students shall enter the room. Contestants shall sit with their back toward the judge and audience. Contestants must inform the judge which news article that they used for their commentary after completing their speech.

4. News Events: There will be 3 news events posted on the tournament webpage. Students are required to select 2 (minimum) to utilize in their speech. Students are allotted the use of 1 news article of their choice outside of the designated 3 that fits their team's podcast. The found news article should account for no more than 1 minute of the speaker’s time. Competitors using an “original” news article are not allowed to provide the required commentary time using that article.

5. Expectations: Emphasis should be placed on the presentation of the news stories, commercial and editorial commentary. Multiple characters may be used, but there should at least be 1 clear host and 1 clear guest/second host.

6. This is not a Draw Event, competitors will prepare their speeches for this event ahead of time!

This is not a comprehensive list. You are allowed to do outside research to extend the news story and even count as your commentary to the required time. However, should you link it to another event, that will count as your additional news story. For instance, you can look up more details about the murder story to flush it out, but if you include another murder that counts as a different news story.

News Story One:

Haters gonna hate: Pentagon pushes back against Fox News conspiracy theory involving Taylor Swift

Watters on Tuesday told viewers that “around four years ago, the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.”

There may be bad blood between Taylor Swift and Fox News — but the Pentagon is coming to her defense.

The Department of Defense on Wednesday responded after Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested this week that pop star Taylor Swift could be “a front for a covert political agenda.”

Watters on Tuesday, during his show Jesse Watters Primetime, told viewers that “around four years ago, the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” He then showed a clip from a 2019 conference organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, where a presenter appears to name Taylor Swift merely as an example of a powerful influencer.

“It’s real. The Pentagon psy-op unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combating misinformation online,” Watters said.

But on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh pushed back against Watters claim, referencing one of Swift’s big hits by saying in a statement, “as for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.” “But that does highlight that we still need Congress to approve our supplemental budget request as Swift-ly as possible so we can be out of the woods with potential fiscal concerns,” Singh added, seizing the opportunity to slyly highlight a Swift song by telling Congress “I Wish You Would” grant the administration its supplemental budget request.

The Pentagon has butted heads with Fox News hosts in the past, and several anonymous officials cheered Tucker Carlson’s departure last year. Representatives for Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

News Story Two: Dad, stepmom arrested for murder of 5-year-old who was killed in 1989

A father and stepmother have been arrested for the murder of their 5-year-old son nearly 35 years after he was killed, authorities announced.

Victor Lee Turner and Megan R. Turner (formerly known as Pamela K. Turner) were taken into custody at their Cross Hill, South Carolina, home on Wednesday and charged with the cold case murder of Justin Lee Turner, according to Berkeley County Sheriff Duane Lewis.

"I can't think of a more tragic, horrendous murder," Lewis said at a Wednesday news conference.

Megan Turner, then known as Pamela Turner, reported Justin missing on March 3, 1989, telling Berkeley County authorities that the 5-year-old never got off the school bus that afternoon, according to the probable cause affidavit.

But Lewis said authorities believe Justin was killed before he had the chance to go to school that morning.

Two days later, Victor Turner found his son's strangled body hidden in the Turners' pickup truck camper on their property, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Because Justin's body, clothing and shoes didn't have any outside debris, authorities believed he was carried from his home to the camper, the probable cause affidavit said. And the specific location of the 5-year-old's body suggests it was hidden by someone familiar with the camper and its layout, and the Turners were the only ones with access and keys, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Before Justin's body was found, Victor Turner was overheard "asking a law enforcement official at the scene, nervously while wringing his hands, what if someone had done harm to the Victim, such as killed him, and that [if that person] was in the family, what would happen to them?" the document said.

Investigators determined Justin died around the time he was last seen alive, and his father and stepmother were the last ones with him, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Justin's stepmom later admitted to witnesses that she had an "altercation" with the 5-year-old before the time she said she last saw him alive, and she allegedly gave "misinformation to investigators" about her whereabouts that day, according to the probable cause affidavit.

At one point, Pamela Turner was arrested in connection with Justin's death, but the case was dismissed without prejudice, the sheriff said. She then changed her name to Megan and she and Victor Turner moved out of Berkeley County and never contacted the sheriff's office about the case again, according to Lewis.

In 2021, Justin's cold case file was reviewed to see if the evidence could be reevaluated using new technology, the sheriff said.

Several pieces of evidence led to this week's arrests, the sheriff said, including that investigators were able to narrow down time of death based on contents in Justin's stomach and investigators used new forensic testing to "tie in the murder weapon that we believe was used to strangle Justin to clothing and fabric on his clothing at the time of his death."

Forensic analysis found that a ligature recovered from the Turners' home was likely the weapon used to strangle Justin, and when the Turners learned that evidence, including the ligature, was taken from the home, they allegedly "expressed concern and devised a plan to withhold/conceal potential evidence," the probable cause affidavit said. The Turners allegedly "uttered spontaneous incriminating statements to indicate responsibility in the death of the victim and intent to conceal physical evidence," the document said.

"Today Justin would've been 40 years old," the sheriff said. "Could've graduated high school, went to college, got married, had a child, been a productive citizen."

"All we want is justice," Justin's cousin, Amy Parsons, who was 8 at the time he was killed, said at Wednesday's news conference. "And I want to see our justice system do what it was intended to do and put these two people where they deserve to be, because they've walked for 34 years ... while our family has suffered."

The Turners' first court appearances are scheduled for March 15. It was not immediately clear if they had attorneys.

News Article Three: Rat plague hits an Australian coastal town, and thousands more wash up on shore

A plague of rats is creating havoc in Karumba, a small coastal town in Queensland, Australia, where hordes of rodents are chewing on electrical wires and otherwise eating everything they can find — and washing up dead in massive numbers, creating a literal stink in the community.

"The stench is quite bad," Carpentaria Shire Council Mayor Jack Bawden, whose shire includes Karumba, told NPR. But if coastal winds prevail, he added, "it is still livable."

The rural town isn't alone: Other parts of Western Queensland are also enduring a plague of native long-haired rats, whose population exploded after copious rainfall boosted plant vegetation across hundreds of miles in the inland Outback.

The long-haired rat eats shoots and leaves — and then leaves for the north, seeking more food, researcher Emma Gray of the school of biology and environmental science at Queensland University of Technology told NPR.

Like an army, the mass of rats also has a very effective, and literal, force multiplier. Gray says they can "produce 12 young every three weeks when conditions are good!"

As photos and video from the scene show, thousands of rat carcasses are decaying in and around Karumba, after washing up in clumps on seawalls and shorelines.

It's not unusual for thousands of visitors to descend on Karumba, whose human population numbers in the hundreds. Those annual guests are "grey nomads" — retirees who arrive in campers and RVs, drawn by the allure of scenic water views, fishing, and a laid-back atmosphere.

But alarms were raised earlier this year. In July, a Carpentaria official informed the shire's council that "the public have reported an increased number of rats and mice." The council considered creating a fact sheet about what the meeting minutes dubbed a "Rat Plague."

"They come in waves," Karumba resident Jon Jensen told the 4BC radio station in Brisbane. "They almost seem trained and organized. They're in numbers, mate, and they swim around in the rivers like little puppy dogs."

Everywhere they go, the rats eat — and eat.

"They're hangry, they've swum a long way, they've come across land a long way," Jensen said, "and they're eating anything and everything they can get their hands on."

Rats destroyed a car by attacking its wiring at Derek Lord's rental business in Normanton, near Karumba, he told Agence France-Presse. The rodents were so bold, he added, they broke into his ducks' cages and stole their eggs.

You can't even escape them out on the water. Rats have been scampering up anchor chains of charter and fishing boats. Commercial fisherman Brett Fallon has been seeing "at least 100 rats a night" on his boat, he told Australia's ABC.

Queensland's topography, with a river system that twists its way to the northern coast, funnels the rodents toward the shore — and dead or alive, hordes of them arrive in Karumba, a fishing and port community on the Gulf of Carpentaria.

"The rats hit the Norman River and just start swimming where the tide and currents take a huge number out to sea," Mayor Bawden said. "Being hardy little buggers, high numbers reach the other side in Karumba."

Once they've arrived, there's little anyone can do to curtail the plague. Traps have been set up, he said, but in the face of such multitudes, the measure "really is a token gesture."

The best the government can do, he said, is to sweep bodies of rats away to keep walkways and boat ramps passable. Animal Control Ranger Phil Grieve has been collecting dead rats by the hundred — that's how many can fit into each disposal bag, he told TV station 10 News First Queensland.

"First day, I got 18 — so that's 1,800" rats, he said.

To the layperson, a plague of rats might seem to signal the apocalypse. But Gray says the long-haired rats arrive in cycles.

"This phenomenon is a natural process and occurs at irregular intervals ranging from 3-17 years," she said. The last large rat migration or irruption in the region, Gray said, happened around 12 years ago. But records of them go back for centuries. "As quickly as the rats irrupt or 'boom' in numbers, so too do they decline or 'bust,' " Gray said.

The decline can be linked to several factors, from a change to dry conditions to increases in inbreeding and disease — and predators that feast on the rodent influx. Feral cats, for instance, are eating well. "Generally during a rat irruption, the area also sees a significant increase in the number of predatory birds such as letter-winged kites, black-shouldered kites and eastern barn owls," Gray said.

To Bawden, the mayor, the rats are "a nasty quirk of nature, and nature usually cleans up its own mess." He added, "This year we have them in all their glory and can't wait for them to disappear." The long-haired rat's alternate name is "plague rat," according to the Queensland government website. The rat's conservation status, as you might guess: "Least concern."

News Article Four: Beyond the ball drop: a pickle, pine cones and a MoonPie will mark the new year

Confetti, champagne, fireworks are some of the staples of a New Year's Eve celebration. But just as iconic may be the tradition of lowering or raising an object to ring in the new year.

The Times Square ball drop in New York City is among the most famous examples, but the ritual is also preformed around the country with some local flavor: It's not just with spheres — a duck decoy, a MoonPie and a pickle are all used to hail the end of 2023.

In Havre de Grace, Md., which is northeast of Baltimore, people count down to 2024 by watching a dazzling duck decoy sink down from the sky. The light fixture pays homage to the city's storied history of fishing and affinity for duck decoys so much so that Havre de Grace calls itself the "Decoy Capital of the World."

In the same vein, for the past 23 years, the Mt. Olive Pickle Company has staged the descent of a giant pickle on New Year's Eve in its hometown of Mt. Olive, N.C. The installation is raised and lowered with the help of the local volunteer fire department's ladder truck. It was originally attended by only a handful of the company's employees, but today, thousands gather to watch.

People in Mobile, Ala., greet the new year by viewing something sweeter — a 600-pound, 12-foot-tall electronic MoonPie. The s'more-like treat was originally made in Tennessee, but became a favorite across the South. Likewise, the Alabama tradition not only draws locals, but thousands from the Gulf Coast.

"In the years since it started, it's become the largest New Year's Eve celebration in the Central Time Zone," said Matt Anderson, who was the special projects manager for the city of Mobile in 2019.

In Flagstaff, Ariz., married couple Sam Green and Henry Taylor, who own the Weatherford Hotel, dropped a plastic garbage can covered in pine cones and lights in 1999 in part to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the hotel. Today, the pinecone is well-lit, metallic and about 6 feet tall. What began with about 500 spectators has grown to thousands in recent years, Grace told NPR in 2019.

"Now we've created a monster! It just gets bigger and bigger," Green said jokingly.

Along the West Coast, the city of Temecula in Southern California welcomes the new year by lowering a set of luminous, oversized grapes — a symbol of the city's 33,000 acres of wine country.

In Seattle, the final moments of 2023 are marked by fireworks launching off of the Space Needle. The observation tower has long stood to represent the city's innovative and forward-thinking spirit.