CJR : Paging Dr. Gupta. Report to the OR tent. And do a standup after…?
Big TV networks with crews in Haiti appear all to have arrived with on-staff doctor-reporters. These talking-head, but real, MDs have for the most part provided desperately needed medical care while also reporting on the urgent public health story in the wake of the earthquake.
But is being a doctor for awhile, and a reporter for awhile, the same as being a reporter while treating the injured and sick? Some call it the Gupta effect, we learn, as several MD-journalists are more or less doing what the CNN reporter has from the start. And, one must say, Gupta got a good and gripping piece of fresh news. He reported first hand after dark from a makeshift clinic where he and his production crew were staying through the night. Other outsider physicians had repaired to the safety of a guarded compound. That left post-surgical patients and others in bad shape to more or less fend for themselves – along with Gupta doing his best.
I saw one of Gupta’s dispatches from the clinic, but learned the rest from a fine wrap-up at Columbia Journalism Review’s Observatory blog, by Curtis Brainard . He has links to many other reports and analyses of this blurring of participatory good deeds and objective news gathering. He is sympathetic broadly to network decisions to let their doctors be doctors and reporters too. The issue raised is potential distortion of coverage should a network broadcast, first person, its physician’s routine work that is not particularly newsy in itself rather than exercise disinterested judgment on what news is most informative to the audience.
Good stuff to chew on. Some TV docs, it appears, provided emergency health care with no video camera or producer crowding close. They also, separately found time to go talk to other health providers and emergency teams for stand-alone reports not dependent for their punch on the correspondent’s own healing labors.That seems the preferable way to do it. If a broadcaster’s doc saves a few lives, one thinks that the network should strive to have another reporter do the stand-up or voice over – and interview and watch additional, non-TV docs.
Related News:
- TV Guide – Joyce Eng: TV Medical Correspondents Juggle Dueling Obligations in Haiti.
Pic – screenshot. Source ABC News;
- Charlie Petit
