NEW advice on how to report suicides features heavily in the latest official handbook to the code of practice for newspaper editors, as operated by the Press Complaints Commission.
Among its suggestions, the handbook recommends reporting helpline numbers when covering suicide stories; considering whether it is necessary to republish images of others who have taken their own lives when covering a new suicide; and not using photographs supplied by friends or from social networking sites, without the close family’s consent.
The new advice follows a series of deaths of young people in Bridgend, South Wales.
The editors’ codebook is written by former Western Daily Press editor, Ian Beales, who is secretary to the editors’ code of practice committee at the PCC.
