Suicide is a very controversial issue among societies today and it is primarily considered taboo in our culture, but for newspapers today and television stations, it’s become something of a routine trend. For a lot of news groups, it’s a way to tweak a plotline for for a predictable ending, death and higher ratings.
The Boston Herald relates the issue of suicide to unemployment mentioning that “Hotline calls rose to 11,000 last month, up from 8,400 in February 2008 - a 31 percent jump. In January, the commonwealth’s suicide hotline, which takes calls from Boston to western Massachusetts, fielded 2,900 extra calls - a 38 percent increase over January 2008.” On one of their railroad tracks (MBTA) five people have committed suicide in this year alone. There were only eight last year.
If that isn’t enough entertainment for you, another suicide bomber in Iraq killed more than 30 people west of Baghdad. “The bombing follows a series of violent incidents across Iraq, including a suicide attack outside a Baghdad police academy that killed 28 people Sunday. The high-profile attacks come after a year in which violence dropped dramatically.”
What caught my attention most though is a story about a young teen who committed suicide after being belligerently battered with words and objects by students and classmates at her former school in Ohio. Her name was Jesse Logan.
Jesse Logan hung herself in her closet because for months she had been taunted after her boyfriend sent a nude photo of her to classmates and friends’ around campus in a new phenomenon among young teens called “sexting.” Sexting is a form of sex through internet texting.
MSNBC reports that her mother has already been through “six lawyers” in a conquest for justice. I hope that justice is served. Unfortunately some of her former students still hold the belief that she’s a whore who essentially had what was coming to her. "It's her responsibility to make sure like pictures of herself don't get around the school, but if she wants it to, then it's up to her," said Mason sophomore Amanda Eads.
I have noticed that some reporters have taken measures to report on sensitive issues (like suicide) in a more empathetic manner.
This means a lot to me.
Suicide is a sensitive subject and can be caused for many reasons. It can be caused by the death of a loved one, an insane conquest for power, or even by a chemical imbalance in the brain, but it can also be prevented.
We should control our actions and recognize when they positively or negatively affect peoples’ emotions, and above all we should take suicide threats seriously.
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Suicide is something that causes so much devastation and is completely preventable. I get frustrated with television shows that portray people killing themselves as a convenient way out of their problems, or articles like the one about more people killing themselves as a result of the economy. Maybe, maybe not, but let's not speculate or report on the various ways people are killing themselves--just the thing to give a depressed person ideas. But the story on Jesse Logan is heartbreaking and raises some important issues without being too sensational. To me, this is a story about what can happen when bullying goes unpunished at schools. I'd hate to be a school administrator and think that my inaction had indirectly caused a suicide or a fatal shooting. There should be zero tolerance for any kind of bullying in our schools.
ReplyDeleteSuicide has always been a subject that I chose not to really contemplate. I know people that have comitted suicide that were close to me and I saw first hand how many people it affected. It left so many people heart broken and very confused. I think that suicide makes more of a problem than it solves. It's hard to be depressed or stressed. I've been both before in my life. But as long as people constanly make an effort to help others and provide outlets hopefully we can save one person at a time.
ReplyDeleteSuicide is a very serious thing. That why it saddens me when I hear about a person wanting to take their own life. I appreciate every moment of my life and sometimes it is hard for me to see why people do it. But everybody don't have the same approach about life as me.
ReplyDeletesuicide is one of the worst things that you can hear about from freinds to family and even to acquantainces. the sad part about the entire suicide situation, is that writer fl;ock to that kind of thing. they think that a suicide story is open possibilty to grab a front page in their papers. and th efact that journalists think that way is barbaric. i would never consider the "taking of someones own life" a possible headline in the paper. i may write about it, but if i was asked to be the main story, unless it was Ben Ladin, i would not want to be on the cover, or the front. it is just not something that i would be proud of. i rather earn the front page with a better story that shows my skills as a journalist.
ReplyDeleteHow, that sounded more like a report than a blog. lol. BUT I LOVED IT, only because you were speaking nothing but the truth.
ReplyDeleteIts sad that we have to face something like this on a regular basis and twice as much now due to economic times. People feel like they have nothing to live for especially if they have been laid off from their job.