The act that dare not speak its name

That suicides are not always reported by the press is a widely-known fact. But the precise reasons for this convention are somewhat less widely known.

In the case of former judge Ray Pace, who was found dead at his home under fairly unambiguous circumstances last Sunday, it would appear that some clarification may be in order.

First of all, it is simply not true (as even experienced journalists have since claimed) that media reluctance to report suicide cases has anything to do with an archaic social taboo associated with taking one's own life.

That may well have been the case in bygone centuries, when suicide was generally regarded with superstitious fear and its victims buried in unconsecrated ground (to give an example, in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the vampire's seduction of Lucy takes place at the unmarked grave of a suicide).

But if, in today's world, the media still cling to a convention whereby suicides are not reported at all (with exceptions that shall be detailed later), the reason has less do to with unearthly superstition than with overwhelming evidence that reported suicides have the altogether unwelcome effect of encouraging others to do the same.

Suicide is, in a word, contagious. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that in some cases, all it takes for a would-be suicide to take the plunge (sometimes literally) and become an actual suicide is to have read a report about someone else who just took the same decision.

By far the best-known example of this phenomenon (which is also directly responsible for current media practice involving suicide reports) concerns the so-called 'train suicides' of Austria in the 1980s. Sensational press reports were at the time linked to a dramatic spike in suicide cases involving people throwing themselves in front of oncoming trains at the Vienna station.

Later, as a result of a 1987 campaign, the media revised its approach to such cases, and as a result there was an almost immediate 80% drop in similar suicides.

I won't delve into the psychological implications of 'copycat suicides', even if the subject does merit extensive analysis. But there is much to be said on the same subject when viewed from the perspective of the media.

Ultimately what lies at the heart of this much-misunderstood convention - which has incidentally often been challenged, though perhaps not so much locally - is nothing more than a sense of social responsibility.

As with all other grey areas, insofar as media reporting is concerned, the decision to report or not to report an individual suicide case always boils down to the same consideration: a simple balancing act between the news value of the case itself and the possible consequences of actually reporting it.

Exceptions to the rule

This brings me to the first round of exceptions to the otherwise self-imposed wall of media silence with respect to suicide.

As a rule of thumb, the media will not normally report a suicide case if it involves a private, unknown individual whose death is of no concern to the wider public, not only because of the lack of public interest, but also because of the aforementioned concern with copycat suicides.

To put that into perspective, apply the same equation to the death of an equally private, unknown individual as a result of, for instance, a traffic accident, and the answer you get is very different. Traffic accidents are obviously not 'contagious', so the first objection simply no longer applies. What arises to take its place is the issue of respect for the bereaved relatives of the deceased, etc. And there are other considerations, too, such as whether and to what extent footage or photographs of the victims should be broadcast or published.

For instance, TVM recently took the decision to air a clip (preceded by a warning to viewers) in which the brain of a traffic-accident victim was briefly seen lying in the road. This prompted numerous complaints, and without entering into the merits of the individual arguments, the case in itself can be taken as an illustration of the balancing act that any news agency ought to perform when walking the tightrope between an individual's right to privacy and the public's right to be informed.

Broadly speaking, traffic fatalities (and the same applies to practically all other accidental deaths) are reported because the public does have a right to be informed about dangers that may affect others.

However, individual details (for example, the victim's name) may be withheld, one common reason being that the family of the deceased may not yet have been informed; and finding out such things from the papers or from the 8 o'clock news has been known to have devastating effects.

Coming back to the question of whether to report suicide, the same thought process will very often yield the opposite decision - that is, not to report the case at all - but only when the possible consequences outweigh the public's right to know. And there are at least two specific instances that immediately spring to mind (and there may even be others) where this consideration no longer applies.

The first exception concerns public figures, about whom there is sufficient public interest to override other objections. Examples of widely reported suicides in this category would include rock star Kurt Cobain (1994), poet Sylvia Plath (1963), songwriter Luigi Tenco (who shot himself after failing to win the San Remo festival in 1967) and, very recently, movie director Tony Scott (2012).

A second exception involves cases in which the precise circumstances of the suicide are themselves reflections of other issues in which the public does have a very clear interest. I myself have experience reporting one particular case - and yes, I was conscious of the dilemma and even sought advice at the time.

I refer to the 2010 suicide of Barry Charles Lee in Corradino prison, a suicide that had direct implications for prison conditions in general and also on certain specific decisions that had been taken by the prison administration.

Returning to Ray Pace's case, it clearly falls within the first category of exceptions, for two reasons. Firstly, as a former judge he was by definition a public figure. (One of the fundamental principles of justice is that it has to be seen to be done, and for the same reason judges and magistrates cannot claim to be immune to public scrutiny).

Secondly, Pace was also the defendant in an ongoing, high-profile corruption case involving the judiciary, and one need hardly add that the public has an automatic interest in all issues that affect the meting out of justice.

This particular case may even fall within the second category of exception, because the trial itself - in particular, the timing of Pace's arraignment last December - also had political connotations at a time when government was under pressure to appear tough on corruption.

From this perspective, reporting the suicide also serves a purpose that goes far beyond the details of the individual case. It raises questions about whether and to what extent the machinery of justice (including the police) can be used for political or other purposes.

Moving beyond the Pace case, there have been several international incidents that posed much the same dilemma for the media. One widely reported example was the death of UK weapons expert David Kelly in 2003: not a public figure in the most immediate sense of the word, Kelly's suicide was nonetheless legitimate to report because it had overwhelming implications for the political process leading to the invasion of Iraq the following year.

In reporting all such cases, journalists are constrained by established conventions that evolved over the years due to very specific circumstances. Malta and its media are not exempt from the same considerations; and there is no reason why the approach of Maltese media to Maltese suicide cases should follow different rules.