Elsevier

Asian Journal of Psychiatry

Volume 24, December 2016, Pages 135-138
Asian Journal of Psychiatry

Is suicide reporting in Indian newspapers responsible? A study from Rajasthan

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2016.09.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Irresponsible reporting by the media can lead to imitative suicidal behaviour.

  • The study aims to examine whether Indian newspapers adhere to the WHO guidelines for suicide reporting.

  • Suicide reporting in Indian newspapers has a strong inclination towards sensationalism.

  • No effort was made to include any educative material was included in the reports published.

  • Suicide reporting in India is largely irresponsible and efforts should be made to sensitise media personnel in this regard.

Abstract

Purpose

Media reporting has consistently been shown to influence suicidal behaviour. Irresponsible reporting by the media can lead to imitative suicidal behaviour. The WHO has delineated guidelines for responsible media reporting of suicide. The study aims to examine whether Indian newspapers adhere to the WHO guidelines and whether there are differences in style of reporting between local and national newspapers and between English and Hindi newspapers.

Methods

The study was conducted on ten newspaper publications that were circulated in Jaipur, India from 1st October 2014 to 31st December 2014. All ten newspapers were screened daily for news items related to suicide. Each news item so obtained was studied in detail and then rated using a scale developed in India by psychiatrists and journalists. This scale is based on the WHO guidelines.

Results

On an average a newspaper publishes one news item related to suicide every other day. Suicide reporting in Indian newspapers has a strong inclination towards sensationalism. No effort was made to include any educative material the reports. On the positive side most newspapers did not publish the photograph of deceased, or glorify the victims. The newspapers did not try to portray suicide as understandable and were largely neutral in their reporting. The reporting patterns were similar across regional and national newspapers as also across Hindi and English language newspapers.

Conclusion

Suicide reporting in India is largely irresponsible and efforts should be made to sensitise media personnel in this regard.

Introduction

Suicide is a public health problem of increasing magnitude. WHO reported that over one million deaths worldwide are due to suicide and each death impacts at least six other people (WHO, 2008). The factors related to suicide are complex and some of them poorly understood, but one factor that has consistently been shown to influence suicidal behaviour is media reporting (Pikris and Blood, 2010). Irresponsible reporting by the media can lead to imitative suicidal behaviour (Frey et al., 1995). The imitative suicidal behaviour varies with time (Bollen and Phillips, 1982), amount and prominence of coverage, sensational coverage with description of method used (Etzersdorfer et al., 2004), celebrity suicide reporting(Cheng et al., 2007).On the other hand there is evidence that educative and responsible reporting can be a preventive measure (Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2010). Keeping in mind the scientific data available in this regard, the World Health Organization delineated guidelines for responsible media reporting of suicide (WHO, 2008).

There are limited Indian studies that have examined the whether suicide reporting in the print media follows the WHO guidelines. This study aims to fill this gap.

Section snippets

Aims and objectives

  • 1.

    To examine if Indian newspapers follow the WHO guidelines for responsible suicide reporting.

  • 2.

    To examine if there are differences in style of reporting between local and national newspapers.

  • 3.

    To examine if there are differences in style of reporting between English and Hindi newspapers.

Methodology

The study was conducted on ten newspaper publications that were circulated in Jaipur, India from 1st October, 2014 to 31st December, 2014. Out of these ten newspapers, five were national and five regional newspapers. We tried to classify the newspapers as regional or national on the basis of following points:

  • a.

    The extent of circulation: The newspapers we classified as regional had circulation only in the state of Rajasthan or only in Jaipur district. This distinction however is blurred because of

Results

Out of 920 newspapers screened during the study period, 557 news items related to suicide were found. Thus, on an average a newspaper publishes one news item related to suicide every other day.

Table 1 shows the number of news items related to suicide published in each newspaper.

It can be seen that there is a large variation in the number of news items related to suicide that find publication in different newspapers. English language, national dailies published the least number of news items

Discussion

Many studies have concluded that irresponsible media reporting of suicide can lead to imitative suicide behaviour (Phillips, 1974, Stack, 2000). The present study was conducted to study suicide reporting patterns in Indian newspapers. It was observed that the frequency of news report pertaining to suicide in the present study is higher than those reported from a study conducted in Kerala, India (Ramadas and Kuttichira, 2011).

The most important aspect of media reporting associated with increased

Ethical considerations

The findings of the study were also communicated to the publishers of individual newspapers along with a copy of the WHO guidelines on suicide reporting.

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