Media has role in suicide prevention

That is what Dr Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, told members of the print and electronic media on Tuesday, during a Media Sensitisation Workshop on Suicide at the Hilton Trinidad Hotel and Conference Centre, Port-of-Spain. However, he said the media had to be cognisant to the fact that when reporting on a suicide, that there were others who would be affected by the tragedy, including families, friends and even the community.

He said the strategic approach to suicide prevention was the promotion and practice of responsible and ethical media coverage of suicide events. Reidenberg said there was sufficient evidence to suggest that vulnerable individuals may be influenced to engage in imitative behaviours by reports of suicide, particularly if the coverage was extensive, prominent, sensationalist and/or explicitly described the method of the suicide.

He said adding a message of hope in a suicide story could change someone else’s life. He said 25 years ago, “getting the scoop” meant finding the facts, doing independent investigation, but also being guided by ethics, and a story being carefully edited was the way journalists got their stories across.

However, he said now everything was “breaking news”. He said journalists ran with just enough facts, using any source they found. He said today there was less editorial oversight with the intention to getting the story out to as many people as possible.

Reidenberg also commented on “citizen journalists”, also known as bloggers, who were reporters and creators of news. He said they had no guidelines, standards, data or facts, but had a very large following. He said their blogging about incidents such as suicide could have very adverse effects on those close to the suicide victim if they were not forewarned by the authorities, but came across it through social media.

He said responsible media reporting could change lives, and could even save them. He also warned about the effect irresponsible reporting could have on adolescents.

“The more repulsive, the more they are fascinated,” Reidenberg said. He said teens were very quick to copycat such acts especially when they are fed all the gory details. Reidenberg told journalists not to dismiss suicide as a single cause, but instead use the opportunity to explain the