From sensation to stigma: Changing standards for suicide coverage in US journalism textbooks, 1894–2016

Abstract

Suicide has long been a major category of news, but conceptions of newsworthiness and ethical approaches to coverage of suicide have changed dramatically over the past century. This interpretive textual analysis of journalism textbooks published from 1894 to 2016 traces how discourse on suicide coverage shifted with professional practice and social conceptions over the 20th century. Suicide was a popular genre of sensational human-interest story featured in early journalism textbooks, but many contemporary texts barely acknowledge suicide, portraying it as a generally private matter requiring characteristics of prominence, impact, or unusualness to make news. Findings suggest that the discursive pendulum has swung too far from the exploitative coverage promoted at the turn of the 20th century to the present-day marginalization of a significant social and public health issue.

Content analysis of reports of student suicide deaths in South African print medium newspapers

“…Explicitly including suicide as a topic in journalism curricula in SA could also be an important step towards encouraging responsible reporting of student suicides. Parks notes that while in the past journalism textbooks included chapters on reporting suicide, this is no longer the norm and contemporary journalism textbooks typically include little more than a cursory treatment of the topic (Parks, 2021). The Mindframe training on responsible reporting of suicide, which was helpful in Australia (Thienel et al , 2019), might provide a useful basis for developing a culturally appropriate and context sensitive training programme for SA journalists.…”

“…Ethical approaches to reporting suicides as “news” have changed dramatically over the past century (Parks, 2021). There is growing awareness that irresponsible media reporting of suicide is associated with increases in suicide rates at a population level (Niederkrotenthaler et al , 2012; Niederkrotenthaler and Stack, 2017; Niederkrotenthaler et al , 2020), prompting calls for media guidelines to promote ethical, accurate, responsible and appropriate reporting of suicidal behaviour (Niederkrotenthaler and Till, 2019; Niederkrotenthaler et al , 2020).…”

“…Nonetheless, irresponsible and unethical suicide reporting in the media remains fairly commonplace, including detailing information on the method of suicide, prominent placing of the report, identifying the location and time of the act, using sensational headlines and dramatic language and failing to provide information about where to access help in a suicidal crisis (Duncan and Luce, 2020; Maiorano et al , 2017; Niederkrotenthaler et al , 2020). Traditionally journalistic coverage of suicide deaths tends to focus on unhelpful negative stereotypes, sensationalism and framing suicide as a deviant behaviour associated with psychopathology (Luce, 2016; Maiorano et al , 2017; Parks, 2021). Chief among the reasons for irresponsible reporting are journalists’ and editors’ ignorance of guidelines and their desire to generate “click-bait” and attract readers (Duncan and Luce, 2020).…”

“…Journalists sometimes deliberately disregard suicide reporting guidelines because they believe they have a responsibility to serve the public by providing full disclosure of information (Yaqub et al, 2020). Journalists' decisions WHO (2017aWHO ( , 2017b about when and how to report suicide (as is typically the case with decisions about reporting other news) are often informed by considerations such as prominence, impact, unusualness and newsworthiness rather than an explicit agenda to prevent future suicides (Parks, 2021;O'Brien, 2021). While it is debatable whether or not it is the role of journalists to prevent suicides, there is an explicit assumption in media reporting guidelines that suicides should be prevented and that journalists should actively take up the work of suicide prevention.…”

Cumplimiento de las recomendaciones de la OMS en noticias sobre suicidios. Análisis de la prensa digital española (2010-2017)

“…También se han hallado estudios con un carácter más orientado a la ética profesional donde se ha analizado la forma en la que se redactan las noticias sobre suicidios. En estas investigaciones se concluye que los medios de comunicación no siempre cumplen las recomendaciones indicadas por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) (Díaz-Campo et al, 2021;Duncan y Luce, 2020;Camacho Markina y Santos Díez, 2020;Durán y Fernández-Beltrán, 2020;Acosta et al, 2019;Garrido-Fabián et al, 2018;Herrera Ramírez et al, 2015) y que, aunque se comprende el significado de estas directrices, saber interpretar estas recomendaciones no siempre es sencillo (Machlin, Skehan y Sweet, 2012).En relación con la concepción del valor periodístico y la evolución del enfoque ético en las noticias sobre suicidios, se puede decir que se ha pa- Francisco Javier Olivar de Julián, Jesús Díaz-Campo y Francisco Segado-Boj ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978 sado de un género popular de historias sensacionales a un asunto de carácter privado que necesita prominencia, impacto o rareza para ser publicado (Parks, 2019).…”