DOCTOR ON DEADLINE

Sanjay Gupta is a doctor. He’s also a television reporter in Iraq and, he proved last week, a human being. Dr. Gupta, a correspondent for CNN and a neurosurgeon, performed emergency surgery on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy who was hit by shrapnel when the taxi he was riding in was fired on after its driver failed to stop at a checkpoint. The child had only minutes to live without the surgery, said Dr. Gupta, who is traveling with the Navy “Devil Docs.” The boy died from other injuries.

Dr. Gupta was immediately criticized by media pundits for blurring the line between objective observer and participant in the war. “He can’t bring appropriate journalistic independence and detachment to a story,” said Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida. He had become “part of the story.” Dr. Gupta filed two live reports via videophone explaining the situation and CNN aired taped images of him washing his hands before the surgery and standing at the table in the operating room. The surgery and the child were not shown.

At a time when reporters are eating, sleeping, joshing and commiserating with military units, when they routinely used the collective plural pronoun – “We are advancing on Baghdad.” “We met very little resistance today.” “We engaged in a firefight on the outskirts of Basra.” – such criticism is misplaced. How objective are reporters who depend on the military for their well-being and, in some cases, survival? How objective are reporters who breathlessly describe the firepower of “our” tanks and the heroism of “our” troops? What about members of the media who have been injured and received treatment from military doctors, did they become part of the story?

From an ethical point of view, the fact that after the surgery Dr. Gupta was made an honorary member of the Devil Docs was more problematic than his performing the operation. However, by bonding with members of the unit he is embedded with, he is no different from hundreds of other reporters in Iraq. He is different because he happens to be a doctor and his skills were needed.

As the only neurosurgeon around, Dr. Gupta felt obliged to try to help a mortally wounded child. His story shows that whether a doctor, news reporter or member of the military, he is, like everyone involved in the war, foremost a human being. In rare instances, looking through the viewfinder or recording a scene on tape or in a notebook is not the right thing to do. Sometimes trying to help is the humane thing to do. End of story.