The responsibility of the media for suicide prevention. News treatment in the Spanish media
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2020.mar.07Keywords:
Journalism, Information, Suicide, Journalistic coverage, Prevention, Ethics, Mass media, Newspapers, El país, El mundo, Spain.Abstract
Suicide has traditionally been silenced by media, following experts recommendations pointing to a possible induction of imitative behaviour in the population. However, this position has recently changed and psychologists and psychiatrists, in addition to the World Health Organization (WHO), request the media to rise awareness about this serious social problem aiming to fight it. Every year, more than 800,000 people commit suicide in the world, which means that one person dies every 40 seconds. Therefore, we depart from a new and apparently agreed upon approach: we must inform. This position being accepted, it is very important to define the limits and the terms. Bibliography on this topic is scarce, only existing one self-regulation reference written by health professionals and journalists in Spain (2018). The aim of this research is to analyze the information on suicide published on the first five months of 2019 by the two main general newspapers in Spain by applying the Code of Ethics on the Treatment of Suicide in the Media promoted by the Association of Journalists of the Balearic Islands. The results show an improvable practice as well as concurring errors remediable to satisfy the demands of organizations, family members and victims by means of responsible and useful journalism.
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