Media Reporting of Suicide Methods

Internationally, media guidelines on the reporting of suicide suggest that the method of suicide should not be explicitly reported. This paper presents quantitative data on the reporting of suicide in Australia, which suggest that the media present a skewed image of reality with an over-reporting of suicide by violent and unusual methods. It also presents qualitative textual analyses of examples of newspaper reports of suicide in an attempt to examine differences in reporting practices across media and genres and to explore the limits of the notion of "explicitness." The paper concludes that journalistic decisions to maximize the newsworthiness of a story often conflict with the promotion of the accurate, ethical, and responsible reporting of suicide.