The suicide peg

Posted at 11:50 AM on October 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Health

Jeff Jarvis, the media commentator, drops the suicide version of "guns don't kill people" in assessing the role of the Internet in the death of a Rutgers University student. He says CBS' Katie Couric tried to get an answer out of him that blamed the sins of the Internet for the young man's suicide.

We can't pretend to give young people lessons in the Internet if we don't understand how they see it. For example, I've learned lately that young people use Facebook's Wall to hold conversations in public while people my age use it -- with media reflex -- as a place to publish or broadcast. Same platform, different uses, different worldviews, different impact. When I was in Berlin talking about publicness and privacy, Renate Künast, head of the Greens in Parliament, said she talked to a young person who took a cooking course instead of an a computer course because in the latter "what the teachers wanted to teach me was something I learned five years ago." We have things to learn from children about the future, for the future is theirs and they're building it right in front of us.

We've reached the part of the story, frankly, when news anchors and editors are looking for angles to keep it going. So far, there's the issue of bullying, there's the issue of whether gay teens are more likely to commit suicide, and there's the issue of the Internet.

This is part of the "peg" problem with journalism. In order to do a story about something, it must have a "peg," an event to tie it to.

Suicide has been the second-leading cause of death of Minnesota young people for years. The "peg" in Minnesota for teen suicide stories recently is that 4 of 7 students in the Anoka-Hennepin school district who killed themselves may have been gay.

The issue should have had more attention years ago. Bring up the closeted issue of suicide in area high schools, and most every student knows of someone who's killed himself or herself. Read the obituary page, scan to the death of a teenager, and read between the lines.

That would be a good peg for keeping the story going until officials aren't quite so afraid to discuss it.

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Comments (2)

Having worked in academic advising for first and second year university students, I know that these years are quite difficult for young adults. They try to establish who they'll be in their first foray into adult life but often lack the tools to control the ramifications of the actions they may take to do so.

The reporting of this story reminds me of the story of Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide after getting bullied in Hadley, Mass. It was originally reported as a teenage girl who was the victim of a pack of bullies at her high school. Some of the bullying went on online, much of it was on Facebook and therefore had a limited audience in terms of the worldwide web, but a certainly it was a broad enough audience for Prince. After the story had been reported on, little was heard beyond updating to state that several students were headed to trial, two for statutory rape.

CBC Radio's "As it Happens" spoke to an investigative reporter a few months after the reporting had fallen from the first page to address the nuance in the story that was seemingly left out of the original stories. (Here -it's the second section) One of the most poignant lines suggested that "to treat suicide as the direct result of the actions of someone else" is not only rare but a sticky legal precedent to set.

I suspect that part of the issue in reporting suicides that are perceived to be/allegedly the fault of others (bullies, in this case) is that it is a complicated story to reconstruct and collecting the necessary information may be difficult. There is no one root cause, no main lesson for this "teaching moment," rather it's the result of a collection of actions taken by many people that has led to a particular outcome. Necessarily difficult to boil down to one point because it strips too much from the story to do so.

Posted by Shannon | October 4, 2010 5:30 PM

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\\One of the most poignant lines suggested that "to treat suicide as the direct result of the actions of someone else" is not only rare but a sticky legal precedent to set.

Agreed. But then the lesson of the is tragic story has to be that we need to treat each other with respect, as we would like to be treated. For LGBT people that often occurs in conversations that you don't even realize. All those deragatory comments in school and at family gatherings made about others who are thought to be gay or outside the gender norms add up. You learn quickly when to shut your mouth and hide you identity and your pain. This isn't a call for politcal correctness. It's a call for respect of the LGBT family members and friends who aren't out to you. I've often wondered, "Would you still say that if you knew who you are talking to?".

Posted by Alison | October 5, 2010 8:57 AM

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