Community Corner
5th Grader Turns Tables On NBC News Crew Getting Reaction To Obama Speech
The NBC national news crew was getting local citizens' reactions to President Obama's Tuesday speech on Syria. But the Skokie 10-year-old, who's learning to make videos, started filming them instead.
It was chance that led Ian Floodstrand, who is learning about video in his fifth-grade class at Edison School in Morton Grove, to meet some professional news cameramen Tuesday night. But Ian had the presence of mind to whip out a camera to film it all.
Ian, 10, and his dad David Floodstrand were walking through the Skokie Library Tuesday when they spotted cameras and lights.
"It was a film crew from NBC setting up, and the producer explained they were going to film people's reactions to the president's speech on Syria," David Floodstrand said.
The producer invited them to participate, and they did, along with about 10 other people, watching the speech on a large screen. Their reactions--including Ian's--wound up on national TV.
Before the speech, though, Ian turned the tables on the NBC national news crew by interviewing them on video as they were setting up.
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"I asked my teacher if I could show my class the video, and she said sure, at pack-up time," Ian said Wednesday afternoon after school. "They (kids in class) had a lot of questions. They said, 'you really get to be on TV?'"
Ian acknowledged the prospect of having millions of people watching him on TV was a little nerve-wracking.
"I'm kind of scared," he said Wednesday afternoon before the show aired. "There are going to be millions of people watching me. And pretty much anybody would be scared."
As NBC correspondent Kevin Tibbles asked people their opinions after the speech, in kind of a mini town-hall meeting, Ian's comment rang with emotional clarity, perhaps because he was the only child present.
"Do you ask yourself , 'how could anybody do that to somebody else?', Tibbles queried, referring to Syrian dictator's Assad's purported use of chemical weapons.
"Yes, and that's how I'm really angry," Ian responded. "What kind of person would do this to innocent people?"
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