Iraq's School for the Blind - CNN.com Video

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/03/06/phillips.iraq.school.for.blind.cnn

By Kelsey Proud

I watched a story about the only school for the blind in Baghdad, and a professor that teaches there. The story used a nice mix of shots, from more detail oriented to broader "scene setters" that gave a clear representation of the school and its students and teachers. The personal profiles of the teacher and one of his students were poignant and charming, and made me as a viewer really pay attention to the stories they told. As interesting and emotional as this story was, I feel that some of that was brought on by the reporter's rather "leading" questions in a couple of instances. The reporter, Kyra Phillips, asked teacher Ammar Ali first how the blind children "imagine" the war through sound, which was fine in itself, but then she asked him how he was helping them get through being blind in a war zone, suggesting that it was his responsibility to do so. Instead of asking something like "what is your role with them at this time?" to see how HE defines his OWN responsibilities, Phillips gave him a role she assumed he viewed himself performing. 

Visually and through audio, the piece was very nicely put together with good shots that told a story and audio that enhanced understanding rather than distracted from the deeper narratives woven throughout. The use of natural sound and candid shots of the children and families made the school very relatable and seem very comparable to schools in the United States, connecting me to the story once again. The voiceover by Phillips was clear and enthusiastic, tinged with that familiar dramatic tone we are accustomed to hearing in broadcast pieces. The end of the piece bothered me in the respect that Phillips made yet another assumption to add to the emotional resonance of her piece. Her last line is "Because of that love, all these kids see is possibility." This is a grand assumption, and I'd think a rather false one for her to state. She just finished talking about how the war affects the children and then to claim that all of them are happy and filled with anticipation for the future and nothing else is editorializing and trivializing. I understand that Phillips wanted to use a play on words with the word "see" and the subject of blindness, but instead of what she did say, she could have said something like "Maybe because of that love, these kids can see possibility." 

Obviously, the elements that make this story interesting would not be possible in a print story. As much as the reporter could write down and describe the scene in detail, the emotion evoked from the subjects telling their own stories and using their own voices on-camera and on-location adds a huge element of authenticity. The detail shots of a child's hands running over a braille book or Ali teaching by holding a braille text and reading to his students aloud from it would be only pictured in the reader's mind from their assumptions and what they already know about blind people. They could get an entirely different picture of what the situation actually is, and the people involved in it.