Media coverage of death of Robin Williams brings questions on reporting suicide

The British media is under fire from one of the country's mental health advocacy organizations over how explicitly they've covered the suicide of actor/comedian Robin Williams.

The Huffington Post UK is reporting that Mind plans to take the issue to Britain's Press Complaints Commission.

“Mind issued a briefing to all newsdesks twice yesterday with information on how to report suicide in a responsible way as there is clear evidence that media coverage of suicide, particularly graphic language illustrating the method used, can lead to copycat deaths," the mental health charity's chief executive, Paul Farmer, said in a news release Wednesday.

Mind had recommended journalists avoid explicit details and sensationalist reporting but as the Post noted, the information that Williams hanged himself with a belt in his bedroom after unsuccessfully trying to cut his wrists was revealed by a coroner live on U.S. television. It was out there, and in a wired world there was little to prevent it from going across the ocean.

[ Related: Family, friends struggle to understand why Robin Williams hanged himself ]

The British flap is a window into an evolving discussion in journalism that's been going on for some time about just how suicide should be reported.

For decades, newsrooms exercised a degree of self-censorship about suicides. Most media organizations – including The Canadian Press, where I worked for more than 30 years – did not routinely report them unless there was some compelling public interest, such as subway delays after someone threw themselves in front of a train.

My 2010 copy of the CP Stylebook has this to say when it came to discussing cause of death in an obituary:

"When the cause of death of a publicly known figure is known to be suicide but the family has asked that it not be reported, their preference is usually outweighed by the public's right to know. If in doubt, call Head Office."

One reason often given to avoid the topic was a concern that media prominence would spur copycat suicides among the unstable. That was one of the main reasons for Mind's plea to minimize the details of Williams' death.

"Time was when suicide prevention advocates thought the less said about suicide, the fewer there would be," says a post on covering suicide reporting on Mindset, produced by the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.

"Fear of contagion reigned, backed by earnest but generally flawed studies. On the Internet you can still find well-intentioned organizations that urge newspapers never to put suicide on the front page, not to praise or use photos of people who have killed themselves, not to include the S-word in any headline."

But research suggests it's time to "toss the taboo," according to Mindset's probe of the topic.

"Suicide experts consulted for this project want us to throw more light on the 9th leading cause of death in Canada, and the second biggest killer of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 19. It’s not that the youth suicide rate is rising – because it isn’t. But a stubbornly high death rate surely merits some old-fashioned journalistic attention. Would we still shy away if another cause lay behind so many tragic deaths?"

Reporting suicide candidly fulfills journalism's public-service mandate, advocates argue. It provides insight into the failure to adequately deal with depression, still a largely taboo subject and at the centre of Williams' death.

And as for encouraging copycats, the data suggests it's simply not the case, argues André Picard, the Globe and Mail's veteran health reporter.

Media ethicist Stephen Ward is not sure that's true in all cases, especially when it comes to young people who can be affected by peer conduct.

“I wouldn’t say copycat is irrelevant. I’d like to see more science on it," Ward, a former professor, author of several books on journalism ethics and (full disclosure) one of my former bureau chiefs at CP, said an an interview for Yahoo Canada News.

"But it’s too blandly used by people who say you shouldn’t use any of this stuff because you’re encouraging copycats carte blanche across society, which is ridiculous.”

In an article in the Globe on Wednesday, Picard noted the difference between coverage of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain's suicide by shotgun in 1994 with the reporting on the mental health factors in Williams' death.

"There were snide references to Mr. Cobain’s drug use and abuse, but little mention of the severe depression he suffered and of his struggles with addiction. In fact, most media reported that he used heroin to treat 'chronic stomach pain,' " Picard noted.

"Contrast that to the reporting on the death of Robin Williams, who died by asphyxiation due to hanging earlier this week. Much of the reporting – even in the early hours after the news broke – focused on the actor’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder, his history of depression, and how he self-medicated with alcohol and drugs such as cocaine.

"Aside from some predictable gibberish from trolls, there was little talk of weakness and ungratefulness for success. Rather, the emphasis had been on how depression can afflict anyone, even the rich, the famous and the funny. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter overflowed not only with tributes to Mr. Williams, but with links to resources for those suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts."

Picard calls the "breadth and the sophistication" of the coverage "heartwarming."

"You can virtually feel the knowledge of depression growing, and the stigma surrounding mental illness evaporating, and that may well be Mr. Williams’s most lasting legacy," he wrote.

We've seen other examples recently in Canada, such as the reporting on a spate of suicides among Canadian military veterans who'd come home from the Afghanistan mission with post-traumatic stress disorder. Families and veterans groups came forward to talk about the soldiers' troubles, which helped expose the apparent inadequacy of government support.

[ Related: Canadian soldier suicides poorly tracked, veterans groups say ]

Picard pointed to new reporting guidelines recently developed to bring the subject into the open without sensationalizing the act or concealing it behind coded euphemisms that someone died "suddenly," as is sometimes seen in obits.

The challenge for journalists is to find a balance between the public's right to know and a family's desire for privacy.

Ward, who sat on a panel on mental health reporting at this year's Canadian Association of Journalists annual conference, said experts in the field, as well as relatives of suicides and survivors of attempts believe hiding the issue from public view impedes dialogue.

“I tend to agree with that, although I don’t think that every suicide needs to be exploited, if that’s the right word, or should be reported," he said.

“I think as journalists we’re being pulled in two different ways by two different attitudes by two different sets of groups – one saying stop hiding it, let’s talk about it and the other side saying you’re creating a danger.”

The situation in newsrooms reflects the discomfort of society at large in discussing suicide, Ward pointed out. Many prefer to avoid the topic because the problem leads back to our deeper misunderstanding of depression.

“For all those reasons we do a fairly inconsistent, not a great job of reporting these stories," he said.

But how far should you go in reporting the explicit details of a suicide? Did the world need to know Cobain shot his face off with a shotgun or that Williams slashed at his wrists with pen knife before resorting to a belt hung over a door?

The growth of online news and social media has exacerbated the impulse to draw eyeballs with details others might not be reporting.

“There are enormous pressures now to say to hell with any standards or norms here, we’ve got to do it because everybody else is saying it," said Ward. "I think that’s really regrettable state of affairs and we shouldn’t be doing that."

That pressure shouldn't stop news organizations from exercising their editorial judgment about what's relevant to the public's understanding of a story and what's simply sensational.

“I really think you go as deep as the public needs to know why this happened," said Ward.

“What we don’t want to do in these situations is to make the act of suicide mysterious or in anyway some sort of romantic and individualistic act. There are causes for this and we need to discuss them openly.”