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Kane20XX t1_is4rqrz wrote

I thought journalists had an unwritten rule not to report on suicides

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HistoryAndScience t1_is56m4y wrote

This is not a rule. A journalist friend of mine told me that the general rule of thumb is if a person committed suicide at home, they won’t report on it. If it’s in a public place like this, it’s fair game and hard to cover up. People watched and filmed I imagine

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7JCY60 t1_is5n4di wrote

This is correct, but it's less about it being "fair game" and more about the fact that it happened in public and impacted others, making it news.

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CactusBoyScout t1_is7aefc wrote

I met a crime scene investigator once and he said any time media shows up to the scene of a death and he says “suicide” they just leave because it’s not newsworthy unless it’s something public like this. Even then, people kill themselves in parks all the time and it doesn’t make the news.

What’s sad is some people will leave notes about how they want the media to report on their suicide, he said. But their suicide at home isn’t newsworthy. Just shows how irrational people often are when they do it.

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thebruns t1_is7co6w wrote

> If it’s in a public place like this, it’s fair game and hard to cover up.

Eh, when I lived in DC there were weekly suicides on the metro and the Post would never report them as a policy.

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