TV's Gupta Chosen for Medical Post

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CNN Correspondent Approached for Surgeon General

President-elect Barack Obama has approached CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta to be the country's next surgeon general.

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Gupta's jobs as journalist and physician have sometimes overlapped. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, he was embedded with a Navy unit nicknamed Devil Docs and, while covering its mission for CNN, performed brain surgery five times, including on a 2-year-old Iraqi boy.

"I'm a doctor first," he told The Washington Post in a 2006 interview. "If I had to choose one today, I'd choose medicine."

His appointment would give Obama's administration a prominent official of South Asian descent. Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, had been the highest-ranking Indian American in the federal government as an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services from 2001 to 2003.

Gupta hosts "House Call" on CNN and in October aired a special report on presidential health called "Fit to Lead." Once CNN became aware of the negotiations with Obama, the network said in a statement, Gupta was barred from reporting on health policy. His only hesitation in taking the post involved the financial impact on his family -- he and his wife have two children and another on the way -- if he gave up his lucrative medical and television careers, sources said. The surgeon general's post pays between $143,500 and $196,700.

The experience of the last surgeon general, Richard H. Carmona, may serve as a cautionary note for Gupta. The outspoken Vietnam War veteran accused the Bush White House of muzzling him and suppressing important public health information because it did not align with the administration's political views.

To survive a job in Washington, Carmona famously observed, get two dogs, because "one of them will turn on you."

But like Carmona, who had been a SWAT team member, Gupta would arrive in Washington with some unusual survival skills. In 2004, in a show titled "Life Beyond Limits," the television doctor walked on glass shards.

"I couldn't bring myself to jump," he said on air, "but at least we both walked away without a scratch."

Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program, "Reliable Sources." Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.