Controversial practices with reporting suicide news in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan

Abstract

Background: Controversial practices, such as faking identities, badgering unwilling informants to get a story, making use of personal documents without permission, paying people for confidential information, and so on, are in a grey zone for journalism worldwide. Objectives: To understand media professionals’ experiences with applying controversial practices when reporting suicide news in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Methods: Face-to-face interviews with 33 journalists working at popular and representative media outlets in Mainland China (CN), Hong Kong (HK), and Taiwan (TW) were conducted. Grounded theory method was used for data analysis. Results: Controversial practices were commonly and consciously adopted by journalists in the three regions when reporting suicide news. To gather suicide news tips, the journalists in the three regions commonly wrote their suicide news articles based on what they overheard. Some journalists would fake their identities to gather information and some even stole photos or documents. Many CN journalists and some HK and TW ones secretly paid money to key informants. Some TW journalists obtained information leaked from their police contacts. At a suicide scene, HK and TW journalists often neglected surviving family members’ requests to stop taking photos and continued to do so. Conclusion: Journalists’ controversial practices violate suicidal individuals and their families’ privacy. More studies are needed to investigate how suicide survivors perceive and are influenced by these practices. Social services are also needed to alert suicide survivors with these practices and empower them to reject undesirable media intrusion.