Within the last few decades, suicide rates generally
continue to rise, especially amongst young adults. There may be many factors
and reasons behind why someone may decide to commit suicide, however whether or
not news organizations should report on suicides has been a popular debate
amongst news organizations and health officials. The basis of these debates
stem from questions of morals and ethics as well as the predicted trend that
reporting on suicides encourages others to partake in the act due to various
reasons, in which could be true in some cases. However, I personally feel that
suicides within communities could hold such relevance in order to be news
worthy depending on the circumstances towards or afterwards. For example, the
suicide of Port Coquitlam teen Amanda Todd who took her own life after being
bullied and sexually harassed by an online predator, in which ultimately
introduced laws to protect people from digital acts of violence such as ‘revenge
porn’. Thus as a general rule it should be ok for news organizations to report
on suicides due to the fact that such instances hold relevancy to the
community, and could bring on awareness. However, news organizations should
follow a certain code and or guidelines in order to discourage a following, maintain
ethical and respectful to the victim(s), as well as bring awareness to the
trend and or circumstances revolving it.
Argument: It is generally okay for news organizations to
report on suicides
Opposing Argument: Reporting on suicides is unethical and
can lead to other individuals engaging in the act
No comments:
Post a Comment