Complaints Follow Suicide Victim's Picture

A top Sunday tabloid newspaper has been forced to defend the publication of a graphic picture relating to an apparent suicide in Co Down, which clearly breaches recently issued guidelines for journalists.

Sunday World Editor Jim McDowell said the publication was "not intended to be voyeuristic", but the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) said it had received 50 complaints today.

While himself no stranger to grief – or to threats on his own life - due to both the UVF murder of a journalistic colleague or to his paper's many exposes of paramilitary killings, Mr McDowell was initially taken to task by a suicide awareness group.

A spokesman expressed "disgust" at the decision to print a photograph of a man who had apparently taken his own life after the paper printed a graphic picture of the man hanging by a rope from a bridge in Bangor.

The police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the man's death. Graphic photographs of the scene provided to media organisations by a freelance photographer on Saturday.

The body was discovered in the area of the Springhill flyover in Bangor at 8am on Saturday, and yesterday, Malachy Toman from the Public Initiative for the Prevention of Suicide and Self-Harm (PIPS) told the BBC that the newspaper's decision to print the photographs was "absolutely disgusting".

"I lost my 21-year-old son in exactly the same circumstances and when I picked up the newspaper this morning, my stomach just churned," he said.

"This young man has a family and friends and I would say they will be feeling a hundred times worse than me when they see this photograph.

"Did the editor not take into consideration how they would feel when he took the decision to publish this?

"Did he not sit back and think how he would feel if this was a member of his own family?

"The guidelines for journalists are clear when they are reporting suicide that care should be taken to avoid excessive detail of the method used. This has been completely disregarded.

"I will be contacting the Press Complaints Commission first thing in the morning."

However, McDowell has been forced to defend his decision to use the photograph.

The journalist told the BBC that the body had been in full public view for three hours and added that the dead man was not identifiable in the picture used by the newspaper.

Just last month, the Department of Health underlined its own reporting guidelines on cases of suspected suicide.

Stormont Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said that the Department of Health supported the specially formulated guide - which was launched by The Irish Association of Suicidology, the Samaritans and the National Office for Suicide Prevention in the Republic of Ireland - at the beginning of October.

The Minister added: "The media has a vital role in ensuring that incidents of suicide and self-harm are not sensationalised or, worse still, glamorised.

"Reporting must also be constantly mindful of the hurt and pain of those loved ones left behind," he said.

"Thankfully our local media has shown itself to be very sensitive to these needs, and its professional approach to the reporting of such incidents has contributed greatly to our efforts to tackle this problem," he said.

See: Suicide News Reporting Clarified

(BMcC/KMcA)