Week 4: What makes a good video podcast? A Review of My Fav.

Link to the podcast: http://ca.video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1118288801


The podcast “Iraqi Health Issues, Diverse and Dire” is about babies being born deformed in Iraq and it tells us about it by providing an interview of a sick baby’s mother named Sabeha Asal.

This video starts and ends with texts from newspapers informing the audiences about the horrible conditions for families with newborns in Iraq. According to the Deutsche Welle news in the video, chemical factories bombed and radioactive ammunition fired after two wars in Iraq. Because of this, many Iraqi women started to have deformed babies. It is such as serious problem since almost all the best doctors and nurses have left the country and the medicines and equipments are almost non-existent. There is a sad interview of an Iraqi mother and her baby who has a big hole in his back as a result of the radiation.

I think it was a successful podcast since it has a strong topic and a unique story. I heard about the wars in Iraq but this story brought me into a new place with an interesting and horrible situation in the country. I saw the depressed mother and the infection, which the baby was born with, as an after result of the war. It made the podcast more interesting, strong and emotional, which meant this podcast showed the story in visual rather than being told.
Throughout the entire showing, the podcast was focused on the topic and its story was really neat and had nice flow. I personally liked the interview of the Iraqi mother because she was honest and showed her emotion. Obviously there was a language barrier, but the subtitle was large and bold, easy to read. However, the text from newspapers was ineffective in that it was too long and I had to rewind to read all of it.

Overall, it was a nice introduction piece that introduced me to the depressing situation in Iraq. It was informative and concise and yet not too long or too short. I thought it was a very successful way to get the main message across to the audience via an interview with the mother and her deformed infant who suffered from this tragic event.