Samaritans Welcomes PCC Verdict On 'Excessive Detail' In Suicide Report, UK

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 03 Oct 2007 - 3:00 PDT

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Samaritans welcomes the fact that the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has upheld the first complaint lodged under its new rule that methods of suicide should not be reported in excessive detail.

The PCC has found that there was excessive detail about a death by suicide in breach of Clause 5 of the PCC Code (Intrusion into Grief or Shock) in the reporting in articles in the Wigan Evening Post on May 25th 2007 headlined "Electrocuted", in the Wigan Observer on 29th May headlined "Teacher found electrocuted" and on their shared website.

The article reported an inquest into the suicide of the complainant's husband, who was a local teacher. She was concerned that the report contained the details of how he had electrocuted himself. She considered that this was particularly irresponsible, and that children taught by her husband might be adversely affected by such reporting. The newspaper said that the article was an accurate report of the inquest. However, it accepted that too much detail may have been included about the method of death and apologised sincerely for causing the complainant distress.

The complaint was upheld.

Chief Executive with Samaritans Dominic Rudd said: "Samaritans played a part towards the introduction of the new rule on reporting suicide and I am pleased to see that the PCC has upheld the complaint for precisely the reason the new clause was entered into the PCC Code last year - to make sure that there is no excessive reporting of suicide methods which might lead to copycat suicides. The PCC's decision shows they are sincere in their desire to make reporting of suicide cases responsible. This particular adjudication also shows that however much information might be released at an inquest it is still the Editor's responsibility to not report detail excessively. "

PCC Adjudication

Clause 5 of the Code was amended in 2006 to state that "when reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used". Complaints under this part of the Code are rare: this was the first matter to be adjudicated under the new clause, which was introduced to minimise the risk of copycat suicides.

The Commission agreed with the complainant that the newspapers had included too much detail in describing how the suicide happened. Inquests are held in public and newspapers are free to report their proceedings, but to abide by the terms of the Code - which sets out standards over and above the legal framework - the papers should on this occasion have been less specific about the method used. By going into such detail, there was a danger that sufficient information was included to spell out to others how to carry out such a suicide. The breach of the Code in this case was an opportunity for the Commission to underline to all editors the importance of taking care over the reporting of suicide. The complaint was upheld.
-to reduce the risk of stories leading to 'copycat' suicides.

Samaritans' submission to the PCC's Editors Code Committee last year had quoted research into factual and fictional media coverage of suicide - and its impact on the methods and rates of suicide.

Much of the research referred to can be found within Samaritans own media guidelines, which can be found here.

http://www.samaritans.org

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