Reporting Bridgend
| 14:35 UK time, Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Yesterday we found ourselves reporting a story where the very issue of media coverage became part of the news.
The body of a 16-year-old girl was found in the Bridgend area of South Wales. She had apparently taken her own life, bringing to 21 the number of young apparent suicides in Bridgend county since September 2006.
That same day the at which the mother of a 15-year-old boy who died last week said she believed he was influenced by media coverage which glamorised previous deaths.
Assistant chief constable David Morris then gave details of a review of the 17 apparent suicides up to January of this year.
He emphasised that, contrary to some media reports, there is no evidence of a suicide pact, internet influence or criminal encouragement. He said a 鈥渃onstellation of factors鈥 including very personal ones were involved in each case.
The coroner for the area has already said he is convinced there is 鈥榥ot one great conspiracy' linking the deaths, though there is evidence in some cases that victims knew others.
But assistant chief constable Morris also talked about media coverage. He held up examples from newspapers and deplored sensationalist reporting.
Throughout the developing events in Bridgend we have thought hard about how to make sure our coverage is not sensational. The 大象传媒 has editorial guidelines which include specific guidance on covering suicide.
We have circulated documents and articles to our journalists to help them keep across the wider debate about media coverage of suicide. For example .
This thinking fed into our editorial discussions and our decisions through the day.
News of the discovery of another body emerged in the morning. We decided to report the story, but not put a Breaking News strapline with it on News 24 or our website, in order to avoid any suggestion of excitement about the story. In the afternoon however, when we covered the police news conference as a live event, we did.
We are lucky to have correspondents, for example Wyre Davies and Colette Hume, who have been reporting developments in Bridgend throughout and bring real expertise and sensitivity to our coverage.
We try to provide context to this story, for example about the real statistical picture or how among young people.
On air and on the website we accompanied our reports with links and contact details to the Samaritans, and . We carried interviews with representatives of Samaritans, , , experts in child protection, the authorities in Wales and so on.
We talked about how to use pictures of those who have died. And decided that they are a part of the story-telling but that they should be used with restraint. We tried to avoid any visual treatment which might in any way glamorise anyone.
Another issue which experts point to is the question of paying tribute to those who have died, and how again this can seem appealing to other vulnerable young people searching for attention.
We decided we would not mention or link to any of the tribute sites which have appeared to some of those who have died. And on our website, when we decided to add a link to a clip of one of Jenna Parry's friends talking about his sadness, we changed our caption from 鈥楢 friend鈥檚 tribute鈥 to 鈥樷.
I would not make any great claims for these decisions. Except to say they are a reflection of our awareness of our responsibilities.
This is a complex area, any possible media role being only part of a jigsaw, another being the role of the authorities (and yesterday the Welsh Assembly Government announced a ).
What we try to do is balance our role in reporting what happens in Britain with our sensitivity to those members of our audience 鈥 whether young people, parents or concerned professionals 鈥 who may be affected, combined of course with our awareness of the tragedy of each and every one of these deaths.
Comments
Why report at all?
If the media were to blame, rather than being made a scapegoat in the absence of any concrete evidence of causation, then surely the wisest thing is to simply not report any further incidences (should they, God forbid, happen).
I'm unclear on this - is the suggestion basically that these children are killing themselves to become famous?
I think if that's remotely possible, some hard-hitting evidence of the fact that none of the deceased are able to actually enjoy the attention, because they're being cut open on a coroner's slab, before being completely forgotten by everyone except their heartbroken families, might be a wise countermeasure.
But I don't support the idea of a total media blackout, this IS news and might have value for the families of other vulnerable youngsters in the area.
re bridgend
would u make it clear that Bridgend pop is 35,000; Bridgend COUNTY pop is 132000; includes several separate towns it Porthcawl [16,000], Maesteg [22,000] and the Llynfi, Ogmore and Garw valleys over an area 20 miles n-s and 15 miles e - w.
total suicide rate is c. 27 per 100,000 in Walesper ann. for a pop of 132,000 35 suicides pa would be norm.
every suicide is a tragedy - but GET THE STATS RIGHT!
Self-murder is a private matter and not a global matter!!! I tried to kill myself various times and failed. I have got a hard background and it always comes back. But Self-murder is exactly about the people versus yourself. Is that so hard to understand, 大象传媒? Please I urge you.
Could you cover the whole public interest element of a young person's suicide by reporting the event and the circumstances without identifying the person or family?
I think you probably could. You do it with court cases involving minors all the time. The people involved and others close to them obviously know who they are, but the rest of us don't and (I suggest) don't need to.
If you want to analyse what seems to be a local 'hotspot' then you could certainly do it without identifying the individuals, but still recognising the variety of close or distant relationships between them.
Are you a. reporting the phenomenon of a local high incidence and analysing the cause, or b. reporting to keep up with your colleagues in the tabloids, or c. reporting because there is a lot of drama served up and ready to be exploited?
some young minds are VERY easily influenced by things like this.We the public do not NEED to know the detail, why publish.? especialy at such cost. We know the answer..
Carolyn
It is the job of news organisations like the 大象传媒 to report the news. Sometimes the news is upsetting or controversial but it is still news and that's why newspapers and broadcasters report it. It would be going against freedom of speech to ban a news organisation from discussing a story. This particular story is also one that is in the public interest. It IS shocking that so many young people in Bridgend have killed themselves. It's unusual and as such is 'news'. It also prompts people to talk about important issues such as suicide and helping vulnerable people. News coverage could lead to parents talking to their kids about their problems and actually averting suicides. The impact of news coverage is always hard to define but it seems unlikely that a healthy happy kid would kill themselves simply because they see in the papers that others have done so. There are deeper personal problems at the root of this spate of suicides. Rather than being the fault of the media, it is far more likely that schools, social situations, healthcare inadequacies etc in Bridgend are at fault. I incidently have yet to see any figures suggsting suicides countrywide have increased since the media picked up on this story. The media is just an easy scapegoat.
If the media is forced to not report incidences due to certain sensitivity of the topic, then soon they will also be blamed for other things. You could argue that, in the same sense, the media has fuelled the demise of Northern Rock by reporting its need to borrow money from the central bank, leading to customer panic.
In many cases the media is only doing what they're for - to let people know what is happening in other parts of the country. They should not be blamed for the happening of these tragic events.
Or as the case may be the Victims aren't linked, the suicide rate isn't really any different from any other years.
In fact the whole thing is one big non story.
Suicide clusters are not new. There is a considerable literature showing that suicide can be contagious, particularly among young people. Please stop covering this story.Dr Joe McDonald (Consultant Adolescent Psychiatrist)
This is tricky because the media have to report the news but perhaps it may now become a dangerous idea to other messed up kids.
Unless this is the normal rate in th UK in which case I am dumbfounded.
Let's all hope it stops.
I suspect there must be a link somehow but this will only fuel media especially the nasty hacks out for a few bucks for a story.
Very sad indeed.
I think there's a risk that people trying desperately to understand why a kid would commit suicide will lash out at anything and everything they think *had* to be a factor.
The fears of some sort of internet-fueled pact, of media glamorization encouraging suicide, and a raft of other almost conspiracy-theory like explanations are going to be explored, usually by very emotional people trying to come to grips with where they went wrong - and they *will* see it as their failure, that they should have spotted something, stopped it.
But at the end of the day, the media reporting won't cause suicide, the internet won't cause suicide. The root issues, what makes a person feel so worthless and trapped that they see no other way to escape life than to end it, have to be addressed.
If I thought the media or the internet were responsible, I'd be up there with the rest calling for controls. But the responsibility lies closer to home, in the real world of interaction between people.
In this, I wish I had the answers, that my cynicism would produce the holy grail to solve it.
*Somehow*, kids have lost hope, have lost self-worth, and are reacting, inwardly or outwardly. The latter go wild and out of control, the former ...
How can the media be used to fix *that*?