The newspaper generally considers suicide “a private matter,” except when editors decide it isn’t.
You probably have personal views on the ethical, religious and legal issues about taking one’s own life, but what responsibility does the paper have when reporting on a suicide? The decisions are not always easy. Editors have sympathy for the families left in anguish and, sometimes, a legitimate worry that reporting details of a suicide, especially if it involves a young person, might prompt copycat acts.
I looked back at several suicides reported on in the Tribune during the last few months and saw that editors handled each one differently. You may or may not agree on the newsworthiness of each death. You may argue that privacy trumps public interest, or the other way around.
What prompted this column were two e-mails.
The first message came from a group called the Asian American Suicide Prevention Initiative, which wrote that the newspaper’s coverage of a Naperville mother’s murder-suicide was overwrought with sensational details about her marriage and her last hours.
The story at the top of the front page told how Nimisha Tiwari bought toys for her 4-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter along with the gasoline that she used to set fire to the bedroom where they all lay on the bed together.
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“Generally we consider suicide to be a private matter unless the suicide is committed in a very public place or when it’s so visible to so many people that we need to report it,” said Hanke Gratteau, associate managing editor for metropolitan news.
In the Tiwari case, she said, a double murder and suicide by a mother is so rare and unnatural that the paper had to report on how such a tragedy could occur.
Also, Gratteau said questions were raised by relatives about whether a troubled marriage was a motive behind the deaths and Gratteau said she wanted her reporters to delve deeper. They eventually interviewed the grieving father.
Joanna Su, a representative of the Asian-American group, said members want the newspaper to focus more on helping people cope.
An even greater contrast, however, was the paper’s reaction to another death, when a man stepped in front of a Metra train on a Sunday afternoon in a western suburb. The incident delayed hundreds if not thousands of people for nearly an hour.
When a reader asked why there was no report of the death or even the delay, Peter Kendall, deputy Metro editor, replied that the newspaper typically does not report on pedestrians being hit by trains if they are considered suicides.
When train traffic is interrupted, travel advisories are put on chicagotribune.com, but those incidents are typically not considered for the following day’s paper, just as most car crashes that delay freeway travel are not reported.
There is some evidence that “extensive and dramatic” media coverage of train and subway deaths does encourage copycat deaths.
“The suicide issue gets right to the core of ‘what is news?'” Kendall wrote to the reader. “Ultimately, the thinking is that a suicide usually has few public implications. … In many ways, we probably think of it more as the result of mental illness, and in that way a suicide is more akin to a cancer death than a homicide.”
But, he added, “None of this is absolute.”
Indeed. When Patrick Ryan, the adult son of former Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound earlier this month, that story was on the front of the Metro section.
The reasoning was though the younger Ryan was not a public figure, his death added another element of tragedy to the already publicized family history.
Finally, there was no question about reporting the suicide of Orlando Jones, the Cook County insider and godson of former County Board President John Stroger. Jones’ body was discovered on a beach near his vacation property in southwestern Michigan (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). The paper noted he was under investigation by Nevada officials.
In each of the suicides, editors made decisions about whether the death was newsworthy and where to place it in the newspaper. I might have made different decisions. And so may you. It’s a matter of news judgment.
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Timothy J. McNulty is the Tribune’s public editor. His e-mail address is [email protected]