“We Don’t Cover Suicide … (Except When We Do Cover Suicide)”

Randal A. Beam · Sue Lockett John · Michael Mead Yaqub

34 citations0/0 files storedJournalism Studies

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Media Studies and Communication Journalism and Media Studies Suicide and Self-Harm Studies

Abstract

Unlike many other unnatural deaths, suicides are occurrences that journalists often hesitate to cover. “Our policy is not to write about suicides,” many journalists say. Except that often they do. This article, based on interviews with 50 US journalists, examines the rationales that journalists invoke as they decide whether to cover a suicide. This can be a high-risk decision because of the potential for suicide contagion and copycat effects. We conclude that in making a decision to cover a suicide, journalists go through a process of routinizing what, at the outset, they had considered an exceptional situation. This routinization provides a means to rationalize covering a death that they often say they would prefer to ignore.

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References

2009The Handbook of Journalism Studies 1974The Influence of Suggestion on Suicide: Substantive and Theoretical Implications of the Werther Effect 1955Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis 1963Four Theories of the Press 1974News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals 2010Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects 2003Media Contagion and Suicide Among the Young 2012Media Roles in Suicide Prevention: A Systematic Review

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2019Increasing Adherence to Media Guidelines on Responsible Reporting on Suicide: Suggestions from Qualitative Interviews with German Journalists 2017‘We report the world as it is, not as we want it to be’: Journalists’ negotiation of professional practices and responsibilities when reporting on suicide 2020Reporting on mental health difficulties, mental illness and suicide: Journalists’ accounts of the challenges

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