BEIRUT:
In a room of Furn al-Shubbak’s press club Monday, students practice their radio
voice with Antoine Mrad, the general manager of Radio Liban Libre, while some
read sample lines out loud from their books.
But
they follow with their hands, as the 14 students following this intensive
journalism course are all visually impaired.All students participating in the
15-day training, a first in the country, are university graduates, some even
more qualified than others. Ghassan Hanna, 35, has three undergraduate degrees
and three master’s, and is preparing a fourth one. He is already the author of
four books, and chose to participate in the program for his “personal culture”
and to find a job in journalism.
The
Cadmos Foundation, which is partly handling the Italian Embassy-funded program,
created a textbook for students, translating all their professors’ classes into
Braille. But Hanna says he never learned Braille for “psychological reasons,”
as he only lost his sight 10 years ago.
Fadi
Sidawi, 37, is following the class in his textbook. He says he’s not sure he
wants to be a journalist but was “very excited” about the training course.
He
also hopes he’ll be able to find a job after the course, as he has been
unemployed since 2002, when he graduated with a degree in English literature.
He
says he would like to work for a radio station. “You have to be a good looking
person to work for television. In a radio station, nobody will be looking at
you; they just focus on the way you talk, the way you pronounce.
That’s
what students are practicing today. Mrad explains that a radio voice doesn’t
have to be “beautiful.” What matters he says, is self-confidence, speaking
clearly, having good pronunciation and knowledge of grammar rules, especially
if working in Arabic.
After
listening to students doing their best to speak clearly about a presidential
visit or a parliamentary decision, Mrad often points out at mispronunciations
of letters, reassuring his students by explaining that the problem is
widespread among Arabic speakers when speaking classical Arabic.
Hani
Safi, who is a journalist at Voice of Lebanon radio and MTV, is also training
the future journalists. He says he agreed to participate in the program out of
“charity,” but realized when he met his students that “we’re the ones with
special needs, not them.”
Safi
teaches newswriting for television, radio and newspapers, and says he is
impressed by his students’ memory and learning capacities.
“They’re
so smart, they know so many things,” he says, calling for media organizations
to hire visually impaired journalists. “They will really be satisfied,” he
says, hoping the training will help his students to find a job.
Saad
Elias, a reporter at Al-Balad newspaper, has been teaching journalism at the
Lebanese University for three years, and says he had to adapt for this
training.
“There
are sometimes some difficulties for exercises as students can’t write and read
[non-Braille], but they will be recording their homework on a tape next week,”
he says, also agreeing the trainees are all attentive, smart and willing to
learn.
The
president of Cadmos, Amine Lebbos, said the training, implemented in
partnership with the Social Affairs Ministry, is linked to a Braille weekly
newspaper project that was launched by An-Nahar newspaper last year.
For
now, articles are translated from An-Nahar, but Lebbos hopes in the future that
trained visually impaired journalists will contribute to it.
Lebbos
says the main objective of the training is to help students to find a job, by
teaching them journalism skills but also by allowing them to create a network
of contacts, and “open doors” to them.
He says a second training
should take place later this year, and hopes to schedule training courses
regularly in the future.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2011/Dec-06/156136-journalism-project-helps-verse-visually-impaired-in-craft.ashx#axzz1ffnFnaqZ
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