Quality of Newspaper Reporting of Suicide in Kashmir: Adherence to World Health Organization Guidelines

Abstract

Background: Sensible media reporting of suicide is one of the important prevention strategies. However, there has been no report assessing the quality of media reporting of suicide in Kashmir, India. Aim: We aimed to assess the quality of newspaper reporting of suicide in Kashmir, India against the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting guidelines. Methods: We searched the available contents in four English and two Urdu newspapers of Jammu Kashmir and assessed the adherence to the WHO media guidelines. We collected the reports between 25 January 2016 and 18 September 2020. Results: A total of 152 reports were scrutinized. Almost all the reports mentioned the name of the person and the method of suicide (99.34%), occupation (85.53%) of the person. The life events were mentioned in 35.53% of the reports. Among the reports, 38.82% explained suicide on the basis of the mono-causality, and 3.95% mentioned suicide notes. Only 3.29% of reports had traced mental illness, and none of the reports mentioned evidence of substance abuse. Only three reports mentioned expert opinion, and none of the reports mentioned any research findings, statistics, prevention programs, educational information, and contact information for help. Conclusion: The study revealed that news reports of suicide in Kashmir adhere poorly to the WHO media reporting guidelines. Identifying information of the deceased was explicitly mentioned in almost every report while almost none of the reports mentioned educational information.