The hypocrisy of the media

The bigger point is this - why is it that there is such “squeamishness”, to use Mr Ketter’s term, about the reporting of suicide? And in particular, the visual portrayal of suicide or death with dignified methods, but much less squeamishness about other methods which cause death - terrorist actions, executions of prisoners or even war.

In fact, journalists and cameramen and women who file footage of shoot outs in war zones are given accolades by their peers, and the public is told that such actions are the very essence of what it means to be the bearer of the news. Yet when the US 60 Minutes program viewed a method of dying with dignity on its program in 1998 it was roundly condemned even by its own peers.

And there have been numerous articles and television programs showing the methods used by suicide bombers.

In the US, a Californian superior court ruled in 2000 that the media should be permitted to witness executions from “the moment the condemned enters the execution chamber through to, and including, the time the condemned is declared dead”.

And there is not a day goes by without a film being shown in a public cinema somewhere in Australia that does not show some form of killing or manner of death. The extraordinarily powerful film Downfall, chronicling the last days of Adolf Hitler, and aired around Australia in cinemas earlier this year, includes a scene where Magda Goebbels kills each of her children by giving them a poison pill as they lay sleeping in their bunks. The camera lingers over this scene.

In none of these cases does the media worry about a “copycat” syndrome.

Perhaps the hypocrisy and double standard over the media's portrayal of euthanasia is linked to reluctance by the media to champion that cause. Take the contrast with the death penalty. The American media’s desire to be allowed to film a prisoner’s last moments, and his or her execution by the state, stems from a sense on the media’s part that it is allowing the community to witness the carrying out of an act of “justice”.

But suicide to the media is, even today, always taboo. It can never be justified - even if the person who ends their life chooses it rationally as an option. Even if the individual concerned elects to die by suicide rather than lingering on into a twilight world of pain and suffering. The media will have none of the great enlightenment philosopher David Hume’s observation that when “life has become a burden both courage and prudence should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence”.

It is time that there were more journalists, editors and media proprietors who were prepared to follow Mr Ketter’s lead and admit they are wrong in their double standards about the portrayal of death.

This is not to say that our community needs to be inundated with a daily diet of ghoulishness or sadistic voyeurism. But it is to say that when Geraldine Doogue and the ABC refuse to show the fleeting image of an elderly woman voluntarily putting a plastic bag over her head, while sanctioning the pictorial portrayal of suicide bombings, war zone footage and films which contain images of people blowing their brains out or jumping off rooftops to their death, there is something wrong with our media.