Quality of online media reports of suicide and attempted suicide in India

News media reporting of suicide may influence the masses toward or against suicidal behavior. So, responsible reporting by news media is important to protect vulnerable people from the deleterious effects of media reporting. World Health Organization has issued guidelines for media reporting of suic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Industrial psychiatry journal 2023-11, Vol.32 (Suppl 1), p.S100-S104
Main Authors: Shamla, Fatima, Ali, Tahoora, Chaudhari, Bhushan, Chaudhury, Suprakash, Saldanha, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
awareness about suicide
Electronic news gathering
harmful characteristics
Health aspects
News media
protective characteristics
Public health
reporting guidelines
Social media
Suicidal behavior
Suicide
Suicides & suicide attempts
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:News media reporting of suicide may influence the masses toward or against suicidal behavior. So, responsible reporting by news media is important to protect vulnerable people from the deleterious effects of media reporting. World Health Organization has issued guidelines for media reporting of suicide in this regard. We planned this research to evaluate the quality of online news media reports of suicide and attempted suicides in India. We assessed a total of 210 news reports about suicide and attempted suicides (70 English, 70 Malayalam, and 70 Hindi) to evaluate the reporting of harmful and protective characteristics in news according to the World Health Organization guidelines for reporting suicide in media. We found all three language media reported almost all potentially harmful characteristics with gender (100%), location/site of suicide in the headline (97.61%), precipitating life events (95.24%), mentioning term 'Suicide' in the headline (98.10%), monocausal explanation for suicidality (90.95%), suicide method in the headline (90.95%), an accompanying photo (92.38%), and suicide method (93.81%) being reported with highest frequency. Potentially protective characteristics were not included in most news reports with poor focus on awareness information. Vernacular language media were poor as compared to English news media about the quality of reporting suicide. We found poor adherence to reporting guidelines by online news media for reporting of suicide with poor coverage of educative and awareness information for the general public. It underlines the need for improving awareness among media professionals about responsible reporting of suicide.
ISSN:0972-6748
0976-2795
DOI:10.4103/ipj.ipj_227_23