Ever since the suicide of the college student who was filmed having sex in his dorm room the media has been covering more and more suicides of gay teenagers. Some commentators have even been trying to make political points about gay marriage based on the “epidemic” of gay teen suicides.
This is extremely irresponsible. Psychologists and sociologists have known for years that coverage of suicides can lead to suicide contagion where people read about a suicide and the level of suicide in the regions affected by the media source goes up. Yet the stories I read about this seem designed to cause copycats. In 1994 the CDC put out guidance for media coverage about suicides and listed some characteristics of coverage that is more likely to cause the suicide rate to increase. Some of the characteristics are:
[ul]
[li]Presenting simplistic explanations for suicide. - Most of these stories are about bullying causing the suicide.[/li][li]Engaging in repetitive, ongoing, or excessive reporting of suicide in the news. - The stories are ongoing and repetitive with angles about how Lady Gaga is responding or how some gay actor feels about the suicide.[/li][li]Providing sensational coverage of suicide. - I think the coverage has been sensational althought that is very subjective.[/li][li]Presenting suicide as a tool for accomplishing certain ends.- The stories many times will mention new anti-bullying intiatives that have arisen in response.[/li][li]Glorifying suicide or persons who commit suicide. - The articles always seem to make the suicides seem like tragic victims.[/li][li]Focusing on the suicide completer’s positive characteristics. - The articles always quote parents and friends about how great the suicidal kid was and sometimes even have statements from celebrities about a fan’s suicide.[/li][/ul]
I know that there are first amendment issues about having government try to reign in the coverage, but can’t these media groups be shamed into stopping coverage?
I agree with your premise. But I doubt shame is an effective tool to use on the media.
“… these media groups…” ??
[QUOTE=puddleglum]
I know that there are first amendment issues about having government try to reign in the coverage, but can’t these media groups be shamed into stopping coverage?
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I think if you read the workshop that resulted in those guidelines you might come to a conclusion other than ‘the media should stop coverage.’ I think you are oversimplifying a complex issue. The conclusion of the study you are referring to is this.
[QUOTE=CDC]
In addition to recognizing the types of news coverage that can promote suicide contagion, the workshop participants strongly agreed that reporting of suicide can have several direct benefits. Specifically, community efforts to address this problem can be strengthened by news coverage that describes the help and support available in a community, explains how to identify persons at high risk for suicide, or presents information about risk factors for suicide. An ongoing dialogue between news media professionals and health and other public officials is the key to facilitating the reporting of this information.
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Should the media be more responsible in their coverage and work harder to abide by the listed guidelines? Absolutely.
Should the media stop coverage of suicides? Absolutely not.
A summery from the CDC can be found here
A similar take from the organization that sponsored the study
You have failed to show a correlation between media coverage and an actual increase in “copycat suicides”, just stating that it is a possibility. So I would say, no, just the fear of copycat suicides should not drive the media to stop reporting on the suicides of gay teens. Maybe if you put more effort towards removing the actual cause of gay teens committing suicide, such as social ostracization of gay teens and bullying, rather than the coverage of the suicides themselves, you’d be on your way towards preventing more deaths.
In this day and age w/ social media? It would be pointless. You’ll just create an underground news outlet for “banned” stories.
Why are gay teens who commit suicide more deserving of attention than teens who commit suicide for reasons unrelated to sexuality? There’s been this massive campaign against bullying lately, but it seems heavily directed towards anti-gay bullying specifically. Isn’t this a pretty small percentage of bullying overall?
A lot more attention has been paid to bullying in general in the last 10 or 20 years. It’s true that the recent campaigns have focused on gay kids. I think that reflects the fact that gay rights are getting more attention in general, and that includes recognizing that it’s not OK to pick on kids because they’re gay. There’s some evidence that gay kids are bullied more often than other kids, although there is apparently also a belief that gay teenagers are much, much more likely to commit suicide, and that view is based on assumptions and bad data.
Because the alienation of homosexuals in our society is more widespread than generalized bullying. You don’t see a lot of adults getting beat up because they have a weird haircut, or because of the clothes they wear. You do still see people being victimized because of their sexuality well beyond school. It’s reported more because of the commonality of the motivator behind the bullying.
Why would the media specifically not cover gay teen suicide? The media talks about pretty much everything, why would that topic be any different. Its more acceptable to be gay now than it has been in the past few hundred years. I haven’t heard of any rise in the rate of gay teen suicides lately.
wow, i just read some info on the link that marley posted,… i wasn’t aware of the 1 in 3 ratio of gay teen suicide to non gay teen suicide…
So how (other than not covering the story at all) would you play it? “What a selfish, inconsiderate asshole, causing his family all that grief!” is a defensible and a suicide-discouraging take, but it hardly seems journalistically appropriate ever.
??? How many suicides do you think occur in your community and how many of them make the news?
Thanks for the link, Marley. That 1 in 10 (mis) statistic seems to throw of everything.
I do think, though, that showing that suicide is an option or it’s a trend does increase the power of suggestion…but that’s an issue in the mental health field already.
I think we need to talk more about it.
I just spoke to my kids about this case from our own community.
Opening this kind of bullying and discrimination up to society can only be beneficial. It’s the decades and decades of shame, embarrassment, and repression that’s perpetuated the bullying. My regards and respect to Mr. Hubley and his family for deciding to share this openly so that other families can learn from this tragedy.
I think they need to stop using the word “bullying”. That sounds like something 3rd graders do, largely because it’s something 3rd graders do. When it becomes physical or more than playground taunts it should be called what it would be called if it happened in the grown up world: harassment and assault. May sound minor, and I can’t cite or prove nor do I even posit it would cause fewer suicides, but I think saying someone was the victim of harassment and assault in high school would make them feel less impotent than to say they were the victim of bullying.
I’ve also said several times on this board- so this makes once more- I wish they’d treat it less like a gay issue. True, many gay kids face “bullying” every day, but so do a lot of straight kids. It’s far from an exclusively gay or “suspected gay” issue.
Wait, let’s not dismiss the possibilities here. If we monitor campus news carefully, and, the next time a Young Republican commits suicide, start a viral attention-campaign with victim-glamorizing content (“He lost hope over the deficit!” “Campus liberals bullied him!” “I never told him I loved him because of what my radical friends would think!”), and make sure some reporters get tips . . .
I’m skeptical, but I don’t know if there is hard evidence one way or the other on that. People could be reminded about suicide by something on the news, but it’s not really something you need to be told about to think of. By the way, it’s not just gay kids. There’s been a fair amount of attention paid recently to kids who commit suicide because of online harassment.
Also, Gay Teenage Suicide sounds like a shitty band playing at your local dive bar this weekend.
The story of Phoebe Prince’s suicide got plenty of coverage last year, and she was straight. There was a lot of talk about how the bullying she faced at school had led her to take her own life, stricter anti-bullying were introduced in the state, and some of her classmates were even prosecuted. I think I heard more about this case in the media than any of the individual gay teen suicides that happened later in 2010.
Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. It’ll just make it invisible. The disproportionate number of gay teenage suicides should be reported so the public is aware the problem exists and can work on real solutions.