Suicide reporting within British newspapers' arts coverage.
BACKGROUND
Many suicide prevention strategies promote media guidelines on suicide reporting, given evidence that irresponsible reporting of suicide can influence imitative suicidal behavior. Due to limited resources, monitoring of guideline adherence has tended to focus on news outputs, with a risk of neglecting other journalistic content.


AIMS
To determine whether British newspapers' arts coverage adheres to media guidelines on suicide reporting.


METHOD
Purposive sampling was used to capture current national practice on suicide reporting within newspapers' arts coverage of exhibitions. Recent major UK exhibitions by artists who had died by suicide were identified: Kirchner, Rothko, Gorky, and Van Gogh. Content analysis of all UK national newspaper coverage of these exhibitions was performed to measure the articles' adherence to widely accepted media guidelines.


RESULTS
In all, 68 newspaper reviews satisfied inclusion criteria, with 100% failing to show full adherence to media guidelines: 21% used inappropriate language; 38% provided explicit descriptions of the suicide; 7% employed simplistic explanations for suicide triggers; 27% romanticized the suicide; and 100% omitted information on sources of support.


CONCLUSION
British newspapers' arts coverage of exhibitions deviates considerably from media guidelines on the reporting of suicide. The findings suggest scope to improve journalists' awareness of the importance of this component of suicide prevention strategies.
['Pitman|Alexandra|A|', 'Stevenson|Fiona|F|']
D001154:Art D019983:Guideline Adherence D006801:Humans D007100:Imitative Behavior D009524:Newspapers as Topic D013405:Suicide D006113:United Kingdom
suicide reporting suicide prevention media guidelines content analysis imitative behavior