Reporting suicides

A newsworthy suicide, yes. If it's done, say, in a public place, or by an at least-quasi-public person, if it reflects some broader societal issue that you can capture in a daily story. But not your run-of-the-mill suicide, say shooting oneself in the bathroom or taking too many sleeping pills. What's the news in that? Us writing about it generates a lot more potential harm than good.

 

Anyone remember T.O.?

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The theory on teen suicide, and I think the numbers generally back it up, is that they often happen in clusters, and a teen's suicide gives other troubled teens the idea to do it, too. That's why they generally aren't covered.

If you are going to do a story on it you had better have a pretty damn good reason to do it. "Nothing good happens after midnight" doesn't cut it.

 

Another question: In obituaries, does your newspaper print suicide as the cause of death in obituaries?

A few years back, a paper at which I interned got the cause of death for every obit -- and if we didn't have a cause on the obituary, we called the coroner. And if the coroner said self-inflicted gunshot wound, that's what we ran with. Remember taking an obit on the desk one night for a 13-year-old, then called the coroner and found out the kid blew his brains out. Troubling, to say the least.

 

A feeble suicide attempt is.

A suicide, however, is usually not a cry for help.

 

I remember at one of my former stops, a guy saw his ex-wife dancing with another man at a club, walked out into the parking lot and shot himself. Of course, the paper ran a story on it because he did it in public.

The guy's brother showed up at the office and threatened to kill the reporter who wrote the story.

Grief is bad enough. Having to deal with the fact that somebody you loved didn't want to live any more? That's tough to even imagine.

 

Our paper's policy is the in public/public figure rule. Maybe it's a small-town thing, maybe it's to shield the families a little, I don't know. I'm just a sports hack. I don't write those stories every day, thank goodness. But as far as I know, the families can put it in the obit if they want to, and I'd certainly accommodate them if they asked to put cause of death in a story.
We had a college swimmer a couple years ago who went swimming in the ocean, hit a rock and broke his neck, and drowned. We ran several stories saying (correctly) cause of death was drowning, and a few weeks later the parents asked us to explain the broken neck in future stories. Seems a lot of people were asking how such a strong swimmer could drown, and I guess explaining it every time was tough on them. We had no problem saying OK. I've heard other parents ask the same thing of papers in the obit, to avoid too many disturbing questions later on.

 

It's important to hit it hard if someone commits suicide while under institutional care, as it raises vital questions about supervision and competency. But there are just too many pitfalls to even fuck with it. A lot of ethics councils haven't even touched this.

 

A (attractive) woman committed suicide at our town's prominent hotel by hanging herself from a bedpost - after a night of drinking, drugs and sex (with her husband and another woman).
The dead woman was a supervisor for one of the town's largest employers, so the salacious details spread quickly. Many folks knew about what happended, however, due to our policy, nothing was reported except the obit.

Several people I talked to in the community thought our paper was part of the cover up - The (supposed) reason: the hotel wanted to avoid any embarrassing publicity.

A week earlier, a man was found hanging in the courtyard of his apartment complex (later determined to be a suicide). We had a story.

Our poicy is the standard: famous person or public place deal.

That's amazing!
At our paper you can list yourself as the deposed King of Siam and we'll run it. Most of our obits simply state "Bill Bob Jenkins went home to be with his Lord and Savior on Dec 12. Jenkins, the greatest Paw Paw in the world, is survived by ... ...

I recall, we ran one obit in which the deceased claimed to be the inventor of pantyhose.
Was she? Not bloody likely!

 

True, but this kind of story is really hard to do well as a daily. There really are just too many pitfalls, both legal and emotional, standing between you and a quick turnaround. And these can be really complicated stories that you don't want to sensationalize. Better, I'd think, to take an enterprise approach, find several incidents over time and talk about the broader issues at work here. Plus, the machinations of the regulatory process, the courts and the healing powers of time will all help you find ways into the story that just aren't available in the first day or two.

 

Well, the paper I referred to did free obits, so we set the rules. The papers that run news-style, free obits are dropping like flies. Almost everywhere runs paid obits nowadays, it seems.

 

I don't understand why you can't report on the death if it is newsworthy but not mention the suicide aspect.

Couldn't you get the police report of the high school kid and mention that he was found dead in his room. Was taken to the hospital but was not able to be revived or whatever and have reaction from the school (we will have extra counselors on hand, etc.) and run the story?

Let people draw their own conclustions. Why completely ignore it?