Covering suicides, and attempted suicides, are a very tricky area in journalism. When I was in J school, and worked at the school paper, the general rule of thumb was to avoid covering them except in especially newsworthy circumstances. For all I know, of course, times have changed.
Still, even if you cover these extremely personal, serious situations, I think a fair helping of discretion should be applied. Tonight, KITV and KHON led with a story of a man who got into a standoff with police at the Best Western near the Airport, and both seemed to stumble quite gracelessly in a story that should have been handled better.
Still, even if you cover these extremely personal, serious situations, I think a fair helping of discretion should be applied. Tonight, KITV and KHON led with a story of a man who got into a standoff with police at the Best Western near the Airport, and both seemed to stumble quite gracelessly in a story that should have been handled better.
- KITV interviewed a tourist who was staying at the hotel and had to be evacuated. She basically said, "The guy should basically get it over with." Sure, not the most compassionate thing to say, but hell, it was 4 a.m. Deciding to air the comment, in my opinion, was where the mistake was made. What about Pascual's family? What if he died, or dies?
- KHON kicked off its newscast with, "A man shot himself in the head today..." And if that wasn't jarring enough, when Marisa Yamane introduced her segment and got to the line, "put a gun to his chin," she helpfully demonstrated, making a gun with her hand and pointing it up at her own head. That was classy.
- There's a lot of backstory to this man's life, and both stations chased them down with varying degrees of delicacy. Drug addiction. Family abuse. Death of a son two years ago. And recently, arson at his house. There were ample helpings of "allegedly" this and "reportedly" that, but still, it seemed a bit sensationalist. Especially the interviews with neighbors, that were basically broadcasting neighborhood gossip in my opinion.
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