Touchdown: Sanjay’s silence is golden

It’s not often at TD&F that we award a communications Touchdown to someone who says absolutely nothing on the issue at hand. But we are this week. Dr. Sanjay Gupta even declined comment to one of his employers, CNN, about reports that President-elect Barack Obama had offered him the job of U.S. Surgeon General. And by declining, Gupta illustrated a good communications lesson for 2009, that sometimes less is more. When you’re being considered for an honour or a prestigious posting, it’s not unusual for the media to get wind of it in advance. What gums up the process for so many potential nominees is when they decide to talk about it. There is a time to speak and a time to remain silent. Gupta knows what time it is. In addition, what was great about the communications play is that important information about Gupta, 39, a practicing neurosurgeon at two Atlanta-area hospitals, a professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent and a Time magazine columnist, did actually get out and strengthened his credentials to be Surgeon General. My favourite was the anecdote about how he was imbedded as a CNN reporter with U.S. Navy medics in Iraq, when someone who was wounded needed critical life-saving brain surgery that the medics were unqualified to perform. Imagine them looking around and one says to the other: “What about having the CNN reporter do it?” Gupta performed brain surgery in Iraq, not once, but five times while on assignment for CNN, in one case to save the life of a 2-year-old Iraqi boy. Incredible.