Media Reporting of Suicide Notes from Two Indian States: A Content Analysis

Abstract

Background: Media reporting guidelines at the international and national level provide instructions about how to report suicide notes in news reports. However, very little is known about the status of media reporting of suicide notes in India. We aim to assess the content of media reports on suicide, focusing on the descriptions of suicide notes. Methods: We analyzed the media reports on suicide in three different languages, namely, Odia, Malayalam and English, published in the States of Odisha and Kerala between 2019 and 2020, and assessed the quality against the World Health Organization media reporting guidelines. Results: We assessed 625 news reports, of which about 11% (n=67) had mentioned a suicide note; most were in English language reports (n=41), followed by Malayalam (n=20) and Odia (n=6). More than 60% of the reports mentioned a summary of the suicide note; more than 40% had reference to a person; and 44% had attributed reasons like shame, blame, guilt etc. An important positive characteristic noted was that no report included photos of suicide notes. The study revealed the quality of media reporting of suicide, with a specific focus on suicide notes in India. Conclusion: It presents a similar quality of media reporting to other domains with a high presence of negative characteristics and a negligible presence of positive reporting characteristics.