Section 14

The Dominion Post has launched an attack on New Zealand’s suicide reporting rules with a front page article in Saturday’s paper, an editorial, and a four-page article in its Weekend section.

Reporting on suicides is covered by the Coroners Act 1988 (s 29), which automatically supresses all details of any self-inflicted death, except name, address, and occupation of the deceased. Any further details must be explicity released by the coroner before they can be published. A detailed Suicide and the Media booklet (PDF, 60 pages) is available from the Ministry of Health.

The theory seems to be that if we don’t talk about it it will go away. Chief promoter of New Zealand’s head-in-the-sand approach to suicide and fervent advocate of press censorship is Annette Beautrais, head of the Canterbury Suicide Project at Otago University’s Christchurch School of Medicine. Her attitude to free speech seems to be that it should be illegal to shout “Fire!” in a theatre even if the theatre is on fire.

There is evidence to suggest that high-profile reporting on suicides leads to a temporary increase in the suicide rate (and that these are “extra” suicides, not people who would otherwise have killed themselves). What hasn’t been shown is that a society-wide taboo on discussing suicide is of any use whatsoever in reducing New Zealand’s appalling suicide rate. We’re not talking about a tabloid-style revelling in the gory details of someone’s death. We’re talking about sober reporting of the manner of 500 deaths a year in this country.

Dr Beautrais has backing from Jim Anderton, the minister responsible for suicide prevention. While, in this arena, there can be no doubting Mr Anderton’s good motives, there is no problem he’s found that can’t be fixed by more regulation.

Mr Anderton says he has sympathies for the mainstream media, who, he believes, would take a repsonsible approach to publicity of suicides if the laws were relaxed. But he says, like all laws, they are written to keep a small number of citizens in line, “the lowest common denominator”, and the media reporting element of the Coroners Act is no different.

Wellington coroner Garry Evans said in a submission to the select committee considering changes to the Coroners Act that

We live in an open, and not a closed, society. It follows that strong reason must exist for the suppression of evidence relating to important matters affecting society, including, among other things, the frightening phenomenon of self-inflicted teenage deaths… It is at once a community tradgedy and a community problem. The community must know what is going on. Concealment of evidence from the community disempowers it in dealing with the problem. It is a truism that knowledge is power. There is a difference between the gratuitous publication of evidence which is of no interest to the community, and the publication of eveidence that is important to a healthily functioning democratic society.

Outside the debate on whether censorship helps or hinders the battle against suicide there is a wider point. A free press is vitally important to an open society and we tamper with it at our peril. We must not give in to the temptation of censoring the press and closing our society in the long term in the (possibly vain) pursuit of short-term goals.

The press have the right to report the facts - and opinions - surrounding any story. Knowledge is superior to ignorance. In other areas, such as incitement of violence towards others, a free and open society will only allow speech to be curtailed if there is an immediate danger of harm. The link between publishing stories on suicide and people choosing to kill themsleves, even if real, is not direct enough to justify censorship.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 9:08 am and is filed under Press Freedom, Suicide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.