19 Chapter 19: Covering Death, Suicide and Other Challenging Situations
There are lots of challenging situations that can arise for journalists. That can range from covering natural disasters and seeing people in the middle of traumatic situations, to reporting on crime, to covering death and suicide.
Student journalists and all journalists struggle with making these decisions and figuring out how to navigate very challenging situations.
Resources
Classmates, Pinnacle editors, instructor, Joelle Milholm, and Pinnacle advisor, Andrea Mason. We are all in this together – a small, but mighty crew. There are also amazing guides from institutions like the Society of Professional Journalists (Code of Ethics), the Student Press Legal Association, the Associated Press Style Guide (like Topical Guides and its Blog), the NYU Journalism Handbook for Students, the Poynter Institute (especially the Lead blog on student journalism), the Scholastic Press Rights Committee, PEN America, and more. This is an intro to reporting class and we are in the midst of a lot of changes in the journalism program at ACC, so we are learning a lot of these things together.
Press Freedoms and Media Law
Thanks to a strong First Amendment, court cases like New York Times v. Sullivan, Near v. Minnesota, New York Times v. United States (Pentagon Papers), and more, journalists usually have the law on their side when they have truth on their side.
Defamation, damaging one’s reputation, is hard to prosecute because people, organizations, or government entities that file lawsuits have to prove slander (spoken words of limited reach) or libel (written – or broadcast – words ) has actual malice, meaning harm was intended or the result of negligence. This helps for accidental mistakes like with the recent Sarah Palin lawsuit (she sued the NYT for harming her reputation when an editorial linked her political action committee with the 2011 shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona.” However, she lost (CNBC article).
For more on media law, check out the law entry from one of our OER Textbooks.
Situations
We are going to be thinking through some of these kinds of situations and talking about different ways to handle different situations. Often, these are not black and white issues. The first priority has to be accuracy. The more we are careful and accurate with reporting, the better we’ll be. The hard part comes in ethical and editorial decisions, which is often in the gray area. When it comes to death, there are lots of decisions to think about from making sure information is accurate and public, when to use or omit names of the deceased, what approach to take on articles (hard news vs. feature), making sure the headline matches the content of the article, what to do for a photo, and more.
AP policy on reporting suicides, spelled out in the AP Stylebook, is “to not go into detail on the methods used.”
From the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) webpage “What the Codes Say: Code provisions by subject”
Elements of Newsworthiness
1. Timeliness
2. Proximity
3. Conflict
4. Reader Impact
5. Prominence
6. Rarity
7. Human Interest
Examples of a found body in a public place:
Man Found Dead at Heritage High School (name vs. not name, public place, not saying suicide)
1. The story is newsworthy because a body was found in a public place. Proximity: In ACC’s service area and with a school connected to the college. Community issue and the community deserves to know. The article was accurate and solidly reported.
2. The high school has already disclosed the information to students, their families, and staff. They put the information out there, but without a lot of the information that the community needs to know because there was an open investigation. It’s journalists’ jobs to get that info to the public.
3. The family had already posted the information on Facebook. They made it public first. They can be mad at the situation, but social media is public. (We could link to this post).
4. The story was written with public information – with info from Littleton Police, the Arapahoe County Corner (twice, waiting to make sure it was public), and LPS. The story withholds the off-the-record suicide.
5. Public deaths do not require permission or comment from family before it’s published. It’s not even common/expected.
Other examples:
Badly decomposed body found in woods near elementary school identified
Body of 16-year old boy discovered on grounds of elementary school in Mat-Su
Body Found In Parking Lot Of Rochester School
Things to consider:
Minimizing harm
Reporters should use special care when interviewing people who don’t regularly deal with the press. The rules that govern conversations with politicians and public relations people don’t necessarily apply when you’re interviewing a victim’s neighbor or a parent angry about school boundaries. A reporter might not — should not — hesitate to embarrass a politician for uttering something truly brainless on the record. A plain, ordinary citizen in those circumstances can be granted some leeway and extra courtesy.
– Daily Press, Newport News, Virginia
Be certain that any contacts related to a death are handled with care and sensitivity. We seek the cause of death for news obituaries, but that information can be withheld if the family requests it and our editors approve. Discuss with your editor whether we should report suicides, which we would do normally only if it involves a public figure or public suicide.
– The Dallas Morning News
Go to SPJ Ethics Case Studies to see numerous challenging situations.
Dealing With Fallout – Online Comments and Harassment
One big thing to think about and be aware of is how the public might respond to articles. Sometimes criticisms and blowback will be warranted and sometimes it will be outrageous and completely out of line. The online commenting world and discord in society right now isn’t the best and it’s good for us all to know what to be aware of and possible ways of coping. PEN America, an amazing organization that helps fight for press and writing freedoms, has a guide for being a journalist in a hostile world in a webpage titled ONLINE HARASSMENT FIELD MANUAL:
