Assessing Adherence to Responsible Reporting of Suicide Guidelines in the Canadian News Media: A 1-year Examination of Day-to-day Suicide Coverage: Évaluer la conformité au journalisme responsable en matière de directives sur le suicide dans les médias canadiens d’information: Un examen d’une année de la couverture quotidienne du suicide

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to examine routine day-to-day suicide reporting in the Canadian media, giving a descriptive overview of the tone and content of news articles. The primary objective is to assess adherence to responsible reporting of suicide recommendations in news articles about suicide. A secondary objective is to categorize these articles according to their focus. A tertiary objective is to compare guideline adherence across the different categories of articles. Methods: We collected news articles containing the keyword “suicide” from 47 Canadian news sources between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020. Articles were read and coded for their adherence to responsible reporting of suicide recommendations. Articles were also allotted into categories according to their focus and primary suicide discussed. Frequency counts and percentages of adherence were calculated for all key variables—both overall and by category of article. Chi-square tests were also conducted to assess for variations in adherence by category of article. Results: The procedures resulted in 1,330 coded articles. On the one hand, there was high overall adherence to several recommendations. For example, over 80% of articles did not give a monocausal explanation, glamourize the death, appear on the front page, include sensational language, or use discouraged words. On the other hand, there was low adherence to other recommendations, especially those related to putatively protective content. For example, less than 25% included help-seeking information, quoted an expert, or included educational content. Cross-category analysis indicated that articles about events/policies/research and Indigenous people had the highest proportions of adherence, while articles about murder-suicide and high-profile suicides had the lowest adherence. Conclusions: While a substantial proportion of articles generally adhere to suicide reporting recommendations, several guidelines are frequently underapplied, especially those concerning putatively helpful content. This indicates room for improvement in the responsible reporting of suicide.

Changes in Media Reporting Quality and Suicides Following National Media Engagement on Responsible Reporting of Suicide in Canada: Changements de la Qualité des reportages dans les médias sur les suicides suite à l’engagement des médias nationaux à la déclaration responsable du suicide au Canada

“…We found that, postimplementation, the national initiative was associated with substantial reductions in putatively harmful content and across-the-board increases in the proportion of articles with putatively protective content, a finding aligned with other recent Canadian research on media and suicide. [34][35][36] This finding differs somewhat from what we observed immediately after the release of the Mindset Guidelines and following the combined initiative onset. The release and dissemination of Mindset Guidelines coincided with some positive changes that appeared to persist over time (e.g., a greater proportion of articles presenting alternatives to suicide), but also negative changes that persisted for some years (e.g., a greater proportion of articles describing suicide methods in detail, presenting simplistic reasons for suicide).…”

Suicide in the press: an analysis of newspaper coverage of adolescent versus adult suicides in Italy

“…For example, in an evaluation of 243 media articles reporting on two high profile cases of suicide, nearly all the articles (99%) breached at least one guideline recommendation and more than half breached three or more recommendations [ 34 ]. Better adherence was found in analyses of Australian and Canadian media, with most articles omitting the word suicide in the headlines and the suicide method in the text [ 18 , 46 ].…”

Media Exposure of Suicidal Behaviour: An Umbrella Review

“…Following a review of the scientific literature, it can be determined that certain media interventions may become risk factors for suicidal behaviour. With regard to the placement of news about suicide, the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention state that news about suicidal behaviour should not be displayed on the front page of newspapers or on the back page, should avoid sensationalism, should not provide details about the site/location, should not explicitly describe the medium used, should not use photographs, video footage or social media links, and should not repeat the news story unduly [35,36]. This is in line with WHO recommendations, which has worked on several manuals to approach this issue [17,37,38].…”