Let's not make suicide a taboo

6 Oct 2010 | Uncategorized

The reporting of suicides is a very tricky business for journalists. On the one hand, any inquiry made of a bereaved family, or indeed any reporting at all in some cases, risks being criticised as intrusive and heartless, and on the other hand there is great concern about revealing methods.

It is hardly surprising that reporters and editors often back off the subject altogether, and that most suicides go unreported. But there are dangers in silence too.

The question is current after the Samaritans suggested that coverage of a recent double suicide in west London may have prompted a second double suicide 10 days later in Essex. At the same time the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has rejected a complaint against the Southern Daily Echo about its reporting of method in a suicide case.

I can’t imagine any sensible or responsible journalist questioning the importance of getting this sort of thing right: nobody wants more suicides and certainly nobody wants to write or publish anything that might cause a death.

Nor could anyone reasonably challenge the need for the Samaritans and others to remind journalists forcefully of the need for care, especially in the light of a MediaWise Trust study (pdf) which found plenty of reporters not properly familiar with the guidelines.

And as for intrusion and insensitivity, the coverage of the Bridgend suicides in 2007-8 left no doubt that the press is capable of shameful conduct in the midst of terrible tragedy.

But there is a risk to the public interest here that is rarely discussed. What if it becomes the norm not to cover suicides?

What if, for fear of upsetting families who are also readers and viewers, and for fear of publicising methods, the local and regional news media simply decide that, barring exceptional circumstances, they will ignore suicides?

This is not fanciful: the MediaWise study contains strong hints of such an attitude among journalists, and previous research found it too. In places where there is a bridge where suicides occur, for example, the local paper will sometimes never mention those deaths, individually or collectively, as a matter of policy.

A media suicide taboo of a more general kind would presumably have benefits. It would mean an end to intrusion in such cases and it would remove the risk that reporting might encourage copycat suicides.

But it would also leave the public, already poorly informed about suicide, knowing considerably less. Do we want that? Do we want people thinking that suicide is rarer than it is, because they never see a case reported?

For me this has less to do with the methods issue (although, as the PCC recognises, that is ethically quite complex) than with some peculiar modern perceptions of privacy.

In response to the Bridgend reporting horrors and in the recent debates about altering inquest rules the argument was sometimes made that suicide was a private matter and that the news media had no business reporting it. This can not be true.

Death, like birth and marriage, is formally and legally a matter of public record, and it could not be otherwise. Try imagining a world in which it was possible for someone to die, and for their relatives, carers or employers to declare that the circumstances were nobody else’s business.

We also know from long experience that it is not satisfactory to leave important matters to officialdom, to be sorted out behind closed doors. Like it or not, the news media have a responsibility to ensure that deaths which seem out of the ordinary — such as suicides — are properly and openly discussed, and not hidden away.

Yes, this public treatment may cause distress, but it is necessary in a properly ordered, democratic society. How the press go about the task is certainly a matter for discussion, but whether they have the right to do it should not be.

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University London

Dominic Grieve: Thumbs up for free speech

4 Oct 2010 | Uncategorized

It was good to see Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, championing free speech on the first day of the Conservative party conference yesterday in Birmingham.

First, he spoke alongside Kenneth Clarke, secretary of state for justice, at a Liberty fringe event and when asked how he’d deal with rabble-rousing jihadists, he answered that he wasn’t a fan of hate speech laws. He’d much rather see hatemongers publicly dismissed or challenged rather than pursued through the courts.

He added that he felt that free speech had been eroded and it looks very likely that some of the Labour government’s misguided terrorism legislation (including glorification) will be repealed. The attorney general made another appearance later on in the day at the libel reform campaign fringe event with Index on Censorship, Sense about Science and English PEN in the Castle Fine Art gallery, flanked on each side by Bob Dylan’s perplexing pseudo Van Gogh paintings. Although he managed to upset Simon Singh by referring to the blogosphere as “froth”, his support for the campaign, along with that of John Whittingdale MP, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, went down well with campaigners last night.

Koran burning in the UK

23 Sep 2010 | Uncategorized

News has emerged that six young men in Gateshead in the north-east of England have been arrested for burning a Koran and posting the video on YouTube.

A couple of weeks ago, a Times reporter asked me if Pastor Terry Jones, who at the time was creating a stir with threats he would burn a Koran, would be arrested if he did so in the UK. I told them it was unlikely, unless he had gone out of his way to do so in front of a mosque on Friday, or in a location with a lot of Muslims around, in which case the Public Order Act could be brought into play, and/or the Incitement to Racial and Religious Hatred Act.

I was half right. The Gateshead men, apparently English Defence League supporters, were arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. Not religious hatred.

Legally speaking, it is at least technically possible to arrest someone of incitement to religious hatred. So why did the police not use this power in a case where the target was a religious text?

Back in 2005, when the Incitement to Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was being debated, secularists campaigning against the bill (of whom I was one — I was working at New Humanist magazine at the time) worked to make the bill pretty much unworkable in practice. Consequently, Section 29j of the Act states:

Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

We were quite pleased with this. And possibly right to be, as there have been very few actions under this legislation since it was introduced in 2006.

So are the police not even using this legislation? Were the Gateshead arrests made under the guise of racial hatred because they felt more likely to secure a conviction?

A source tells me the police are claiming that the burning of the Koran itself is the crux of the arrest: not the posting on YouTube. But I cannot imagine how the burning of a book, no matter how precious that book is to some people, is a crime in and of itself. And I certainly don’t understand how it’s a race crime.