When a media outlet fails to get it right, the consequences are often limited to disgruntled parties involved in the story.
However, when the story breaches not one, but two of the Australian Journalism Association’s Code of Ethics, it is necessary that media outlets and journalists condemn the actions that threaten the professionalism of the fourth estate.
Broadcast media outlets affiliated with Southern Cross Broadcasting Australia Limited reported earlier this year that two teenage girls had taken their lives resulting in an anguished online plea from one of the girls’ mother to ask ‘why’.
The offending article published on the news section of Ninemsn and attributed to AAP took excerpts from an unknown writer, deduced by Southern Cross as the one of the girls’ mother.
Excerpts included the lead up of events to the suicide, the method of fatality (repeated twice) and identification of the girls with the mother’s linked to one of the girls and her occupation stated.
It is this content of the article and its mere existence that breaches two of the AJA’s Code of Ethics.
8. Use fair, responsible and honest means to obtain material. Identify yourself and your employer before obtaining any interview for publication or broadcast. Never exploit a person’s vulnerability or ignorance of media practice.
The identified mother wrote and technically ‘published’ online her grief-stricken state at her young daughters disappearance and subsequent suicide. A reasonable person would acknowledge that her suffering might have clouded her judgment in posting these feelings 'publicly' on the internet. Reporting and taking excerpts from her distraught entry is simply exploitative behaviour.
It thus follows that with the eleventh point has been breached:
11. Respect private grief and personal privacy. Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude.
The story deals with the suicide of two impressionable teens. As high school students engaging with peers of the same age group who may or may not be in similar mental states, the reporting of this tragedy and the methods lead to concerns that there are likely to be copy-cat attempts.
Hence why suicide is not reported on.
In fact AAP went as far as issuing a second article merely an hour and a half later on Ninemsn entitled “Teenage pair’s friends ‘now at risk’”. The first paragraph states that: Friends of two teenage girls who apparently committed suicide together in bushland outside Melbourne are also at ‘huge risk’ of harming themselves, a psychologist says.
AAP and Southern Cross Broadcasting must take some part of responsibility for this ‘huge risk’ to the teen girl’s peers for re-publishing information on the suicide and method of death.
The other concern is that it is a monumental time of loss for a family. Journalists should not feed of the pain and suffering of others, as that in reporting such deaths, it could inflict further anguish.
The question asked of Southern Cross Broadcasting is that with the mother’s own online submission of grief and incidents surrounding the suicide, was it necessary to then publish excerpts to a larger public. It is disrespectful to this mother, who is all but named in the article, to, at a time of grieving and loss, use this as the basis of a story.
Continuation of the story through radio and nightly television news told of the mother’s online entry but exempted details of death.
Ten news took the absurdity of this story, that should have not even been written, to a whole new level, suggesting links between one of the girls and a suicide website, the SuicideGirls.
It’s a pity for Ten that in filming underage peers dealing with their grief as they arrived at school they also managed to confuse SuicideGirls, an online altporn community that showcases pierced and tattooed girls, as a site that possibly lead one of the girls towards a pact based suicide.
It is necessary to question journalistic ethics, as it is to identify when they have failed members of our community.
The exploitation of personal grief for a story is evident in this case. The possible danger it has placed other students in is deeply concerning and a clear example of why suicide is and should remain the territory of mental health professionals and community discussion, and not the media’s role to salivate over private mourning.
This article in question can be found at –
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/articl.aspx?id=262519
Affected by mental health issues yourself or know someone who is? Check out our sister site http://www.reachout.com.au/ 
