Whenever there is a suicide reported in the media, the question arises as to whether it is ethical to report suicides at all. What if it inspires copycat suicides? But I think these fears are overblown, and I think the media reporting of suicides is both ethical and impossible to avoid.
The phenomenon of reported suicides inspiring other suicides is know academically as “suicide clusters”, and there is a lot of well respected research as well as thoughtful and professional analyses by people in the media supporting the phenomenon. However, this conclusion has not gone unchallenged,
The interpretations drawn from this research (assuming the pro-cluster side is valid) are questionable. Even if some people’s chance of committing suicide is elevated by media reports, an equal or greater number of suicides could be prevented by raising awareness about suicide and its warning signs.
So it’s not a matter of whether to report suicides, it’s a matter of how. There exist very sensitive and thoughtful guides about how to report a suicide, and as long as these guidlines are followed, there should be no moral objection to the reporting of suicides.
And in this Internet-saturated era, there is no way to control information, so total suppression is not a option. If the media didn’t report suicides, it would not prevent depressed people from hearing about it. Even in the pre-Internet era, it was problematic. Suicide rips a hole in the social fabric of a community, and that loss is bound to cause an undeniable ripple effect that will do the media’s job quite efficiently.
And then people are left wondering why their local media is “ignoring the story”.
That effect is multiplied beyond all recognition with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, email, and all the rest. The Internet is the most efficient form of social communication ever known, and all it takes is one media outlet, or prominent blogger, or major Twitter account, to share the story of the suicide before any media outlet that doesn’t report it looks like they are deliberately ignoring the story out of callous disrespect for human life.
For these, and many other points I will think of later, I think that it is not only acceptable for the media to report suicides, it is necessary, and even inevitable.
For one, all day long it’s been dark, rainy, cold, and miserable. And I had to wait for the bus in it. Twice. When I went out to wait for the bus the first time, it was 3 degrees Celsius, dark as mid-dusk, and raining hard. And I was late. I missed my bus. That’s what I get for trying to push my luck so I wouldn’t have to wait in the rain and cold for too long.
Instead, I ended up waiting for the bus for almost half an hour in that miserable weather. And then, of course, I was late for class, which I hate, because as I have mentioned before, I hate missing stuff.
And then class was over and it was time to come home. This time, I successfully managed to be smart. When I read on the schedule posted at the bus stop that my bus wouldn’t be there for 15 minutes, I went back up the steps and spent ten minutes inside the warm dry confines of Kwantlen.
I realized today that the little bits of exercise I get moving around Kwantlen, including making it up the stairs every day, don’t hurt nearly as much as they used to. So maybe I am finally getting into proper condition. Took longer than I thought, but what the hell. It makes life easier.
As it turned out, my bus was late, so my clever plan was only partially successful. I ended up waiting out there for something like eight minutes anyway. And none too happy about it either. I really need to weatherproof myself ASAP.
In other recent crappiness, the strap on my watch broke when I was at the BCSFA meeting yesterday, so for now, it’s a pocket watch. Sigh. It always really depresses me when my clothes break, and this counts.
It was a terrible crime, to which the watch was clearly an accessory.
Oh, and to top it all off, the computer I am typing this on just crashed. Again. That’s the second time today. I wish I knew what the hell caused that. As far as I can tell, my computer just gets crashy sometimes. It’s like some kind of seizure disorder. The computer is quite ancient…. perhaps it is developing senile dementia.
Join the freaking club.
Oh, and one more thing : I really feel like I am forgetting some terribly important assignment. I have checked all my course websites and there’s nothing there that I didn’t already know was there (I have to bring original photographs and original audio to Creative Writing, for example), but I can’t shake the feeling that I am missing something big and that I had better find it pronto or I am in deep dookie.
Whether that is my meta-consciousness sort of half-assedly doing its job right or just a product of my fevered and paranoid imagination remains to be seen.
That’s the sort of thing you have to deal with when you are habitually absentminded. A lot of the time it seems, at least to more mentally organized people, like we forgetful types just don’t care enough to remember things, but it’s not true.
We care deeply, which is why sometimes we are seized with the sensation that we are forgetting something terribly important and if we don’t remember it, something horrible will happen.
That’s been true often enough in our lives that it makes us paranoid and fearful. I have had nightmares about forgetting something important and not being able to remember what it was. They are some of the worst nightmares I have ever had, presumably they are so damned plausible.
If it was just a matter of caring enough, I wouldn’t have any problem at all. But there’s just something about certain minds like mine that leads to information coming in and going right back out again easily.
Honestly, it’s like a learning disability. You can learn to cope with it, but you can’t ever get rid of it.
So I will wrack my brain for stuff I need to do. I have emailed my Intro to Journalism prof to see if the first draft of our “blog post” (in order words, final essay) is due tomorrow. If it is, um, oops. It’s not the 300 to 400 words that worries me, of course. As if. It’s the five references I have to find to back up what I am saying.
I don’t prove what I say, dammit. You either agree with my reasoning or you don’t. Proving is for science!
Well…. and journalism. Dammit.
I hope my prof gets back to me soon, because if it IS due tomorrow, that means I gotta hustle like crazy. I don’t even have a topic picked from the list yet. There must be something on there that interests me.
Yeah, it’s sort of lame that I have to use one from a list of preselected topics. But I understand. A lot of people are jsut not equipped to come up with their own. Especially all those “excellent sheep” millennials who are used to just doing what they are told and are therefore utterly lost when asked to express themselves or do things on their own initiative.
I mean, I have never been great at that second one either, but still. I feel bad for these kids.
Having the rough draft in on time is only worth 5 percent of the final mark, but that’s a lot. That’s like one twentieth of it. I would hate to just throw five percent out the window just like that.
Plus I have to do my usual Monday assignment. Sigh. The student’s life is not an easy one.
And, of course, the real irony in all of this is that I was bored and restless Saturday. If I had just pulled my cranium out of my rectum long enough to realize it would be wise to see if I had schoolwork, I could have done it then.
What can I say. I am good at everything but reality.
