Department of Psychiatry, Voluntary Health Services and SNEHA Suicide Prevention Centre, Tamil Nadu 600017, India.
Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune 411004, India.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jun 8;18(12):6206. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18126206.
Each year there are more than 800,000 deaths by suicide across the world, while India alone accounts for one third of female suicides and one fourth of male suicides worldwide. Responsible media reporting of suicide is an important suicide prevention intervention at the population level. There is sufficient evidence to show that the way suicide is reported and portrayed in the media can have a significant impact on individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Recognizing the important role of the media in suicide prevention, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidelines for responsible reporting of suicides by the media. The Press Council of India, in 2019 endorsed WHO's guidelines for media reporting of suicides, however there is no evidence that the Indian media is complying with these guidelines.
To encourage responsible media reporting, we developed a scorecard to assess and rate media reports on suicide. We reviewed several resource documents that contained guidelines on responsible reporting of suicide. After consulting with a team of experts, we arrived at a scorecard that consisted of 10 positive and 10 negative parameters.
We applied the scorecard to 1318 reports on suicide from 9 English language newspapers, with the highest readership in India between the dates of 1 April to 30 June 2020. For the articles analyzed, the average positive score across all newspapers was 1.32 and the average negative score was 3.31.
The scorecard can be a useful tool to assess media reports on suicide and provide metrics for the same. It can facilitate improved monitoring and engagement with media organizations, who can quickly check their own reporting compliance to the WHO guidelines and compare how well they are performing compared to their peers over time.
全球每年有超过 80 万人自杀身亡，而仅印度一国就占全球女性自杀人数的三分之一和男性自杀人数的四分之一。负责任的媒体对自杀事件的报道是一种重要的人群层面的自杀预防干预措施。有充分的证据表明，媒体对自杀事件的报道和描述方式会对有自杀念头和行为的个人产生重大影响。鉴于媒体在自杀预防方面的重要作用，世界卫生组织（WHO）发布了媒体对自杀事件进行负责任报道的指南。印度报业协会在 2019 年认可了世界卫生组织关于媒体自杀报道的指南，但没有证据表明印度媒体正在遵守这些指南。
为了鼓励负责任的媒体报道，我们开发了一个评分卡来评估和评价媒体对自杀事件的报道。我们查阅了几份包含负责任报道自杀指南的资源文件。在与一个专家团队协商后，我们制定了一个包含 10 个积极参数和 10 个消极参数的评分卡。
我们将评分卡应用于 2020 年 4 月 1 日至 6 月 30 日期间，印度阅读量最高的 9 家英文报纸上的 1318 篇自杀报道。在分析的文章中，所有报纸的平均积极得分为 1.32，平均消极得分为 3.31。
评分卡可以成为评估媒体对自杀事件报道的有用工具，并提供相关指标。它可以促进对媒体组织的更好监测和参与，这些组织可以快速检查自己对世界卫生组织指南的报道遵守情况，并比较自己与同行相比在一段时间内的表现。
