The Washington Post
Some of the most visible American television correspondents in Haiti aren’t just reporting the story. They’re actively participating in it in an unusual way — performing surgeries, providing medical treatment and even delivering babies on camera.
For the first time, all of the major domestic TV news networks have deployed doctor-reporters to the scene of a natural disaster, producing a dramatic kind of participatory journalism. Jennifer Ashton, CBS News’s medical correspondent and a doctor, assisted with the treatment of a teenage girl whose arm had been amputated. NBC’s Nancy Snyderman, a surgeon, has spent days splinting broken bones, while ABC’s Richard Besser, a doctor formerly affiliated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helped a woman deliver a premature baby.
The twin roles — doctor and journalist — might be a reflection of the Gupta Effect, after CNN’s dashing medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta. More…