Suicide Reporting on Front Pages of Major Newspapers in Taiwan Violating Reporting Recommendations Between 2001 and 2012

Abstract

Media reporting can lead to the acceptance of incorrect ideas and information by the general public, which in turn can impact behavior. A number of studies have found that suicide reporting in the media can lead to an increase in the suicide rate or copycat suicides. Therefore, the aims of this study are to (a) investigate front-page reporting of suicide in four major newspapers in Taiwan; (b) investigate violation of recommendations for reporting suicide by the four major newspapers in Taiwan; and (c) investigate the impact of important events and government policy on front-page reporting of suicide (i.e., the effect of the Apple Daily newspaper entering the market, and the start of media monitoring). We carried out content analysis of reports of suicide on the front pages of the four newspapers with the highest rates of readership in Taiwan (China Times, Liberty Times, Apple Daily, and United Daily News) between 2001 and 2012. We used the chi-squared test, chi-squared test for trend, and analysis of variance to analyze trends in violation of reporting recommendations and potential associated factors. We found that (a) suicide was most commonly reported as a front-page headline and as a whole-page spread by the four major newspapers in Taiwan, with many reports including photographs; (b) reporting of suicide by the four major newspapers in Taiwan frequently violated World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for suicide reporting in the media; (c) following the entry of the Apple Daily newspaper into the Taiwanese market, reporting approaches to suicide by the other three major newspapers changed to more sensational photos and texts; and (d) monitoring of suicide reporting by the Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center appears to have been only partially effective. In summary, reporting of suicide by the four major newspapers in Taiwan could be further improved. Effective regulation of suicide reporting by newspapers could reduce the impact of this reporting on readers. In addition, regular assessment of observance of the WHO recommendations for suicide reporting by newspapers is an important part of suicide prevention.

Online media reporting of suicidal behaviour in Ghana: Analysis of adherence to the WHO guidelines

“…In most low-and middle-income countries (LAMICs), the WHO reporting guidelines remain the main reference document guiding media practitioners in reporting suicide. Similar to research findings from many high-income countries (Bolzern et al, 2019;Marzano et al, 2018;McTernan et al, 2018;Stack, 2020;Utterson et al, 2017), recent evidence shows that adherence to the WHO's recommendations and compliance with standard reporting guidelines are still lacking among journalists and media outlets in LAMICs (Arafat et al, 2019;Armstrong et al, 2018;Chandra et al, 2014;Chang & Freedman, 2018;Cheng et al, 2017;Chiang et al, 2016;Chu et al, 2018;Chun et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2013). For example, quality assessment of media reporting of suicide in India, within the lens of the WHO reporting guidelines, shows that reporting of potentially harmful features (e.g.…”

Assessing the Use of Media Reporting Recommendations by the World Health Organization in Suicide News Published in the Most Influential Media Sources in China, 2003–2015

“…Feng et al [ 17 ] examined the compliance of 2015 newspaper reports about suicide with WHO media guidelines in Guangdong province and found the majority of suicide reports did not comply. Chiang et al [ 18 ] investigated front-page reporting about suicide in four major newspapers in Taiwan between 2001 and 2012 and concluded that reporting of suicide news by the four major Taiwanese newspapers could be improved through regular assessment and observance of the WHO recommendations. These previous studies are limited by focusing on particular regions in China, many of which are higher-income regions outside the mainland People’s Republic of China.…”

The Trend of Suicide Reporting in the Media: an Effectiveness Study of Daily Surveillance over Nine Years

“…Much lower adherence to the "No photograph" recommendation (about 9%) was also reported by Fu et al [16]. Chiang et al found that suicide was commonly reported on the front page with photographs [17] .…”

“…In spite of the wide dissemination and promotion of WHO guidelines for media suicide reporting, most studies report a generally low reported adherence to guidelines and show 10 cultural differences in compliance with various guideline items [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. For instance, some countries reported a quite low adherence to providing helpful information and higher adherence with not publishing photographs.…”

“…Fu et al (2008) investigated 5,740 reports of suicide and found no significant changes in the content of reporting after publication of the WHO recommendations [16]. Chiang et al analyzed the trends in major newspapers violating reporting recommendations; they found that suicide was the most commonly reported headline on the front page and on the whole page, with many reports including photographs [17] . Few studies have comprehensively analyzed compliance with the WHO guidelines, or examined the effectiveness of a long-term intervention on the media report of suicide.…”