JMU softball player death and possible suicide - too far?

We had a ton of that at my last newspaper stop, Coco, with young people in high school/college committing suicide, and their parents calling us, pleading with us to do a story on their child's suicide, to raise awareness.

There was one mother who begged us to come to the funeral and visitation and talk to the people who were closest to them and were experiencing the most pain.

 

When they don't immediately announce a cause of death, it's become code for a suicide.

I like this approach. Of course, suicide is still a taboo to many editors, so good luck.

 

We had a cluster of suicides by high school kids and recent alumni in the same small, wealthy town.

At least one family was open to talking about their son, who seemed pretty darn perfect from the outside. (If I recall, one of the kids who died by suicide had allegedly been bullied because he had special needs.) We tried to do a story when the school board implemented a national suicide-prevention curriculum a few months later, but no one -- neither administrators nor the families whose kids had died by suicide -- would talk about why... even though it seemed painfully obvious.

That's an unwritten story which still haunts me.

 

A friend in Carmel (small, wealthy town) told me of a series of more than a dozen suicides among an era of young adults who all went to Carmel High School in the late 1990s. One parent wrote some books about it. A newspaper wrote an investigative story in which several psychiatrists/psychologists were among the parents/siblings/friends interviewed. There was no defining reason. Google "Carmel suicides" if interested.

 

In the JMU case, the school isn't going to say it's a suicide unless the act is carried out in public view. In that event, it has no choice but to be transparent because it has to tell parents that, for example, no other students were physically harmed.

 

RIP, Lauren. Seems like, sadly, we all have some personal anecdotes that tie back to this topic.

Years ago, a local high school team had a player die by suicide. That alone, while tragic, wasn’t a story for the sports section. However, this death caused a major disruption to the team’s schedule. Our paper had a lot of different opinions about: Do we say a player died? Do we identify the player? Do we identify the cause of death? Do we write that the team’s schedule has changed, but not say why (I think this is the route we’d ultimately gone)? Do we not write anything at all?

It was perhaps the most polarizing topic we ever discussed in the newsroom.

 

You can’t ignore news. A news organization cannot pretend something didn’t happen because it is unwilling to upset its audience.
This is basic.
Denial of the unpleasant truth is part of the reason COVID has been as bad as it has been in this country.
Who are the people arguing for willful ignorance of reality in this local sports story? Are they actual journalists? Or have they elected to abdicate responsibility because their neighbors will be mad at them?

 

So, this seems pretty cut and dry. The player is a public figure and had she died of other causes, it would likely be reported. So even though it’s a suicide, there’s an obligation to report it.

 

“Actual journalists” will tell you that coverage and publicity about suicides often leads to other suicides. Something like this is really difficult to cover in a responsible manner. The language is really important.

Every newsroom I’ve worked in has had a policy of not covering suicides unless there was a compelling reason to do it in the public interest. There rarely is.

I think labeling the catcher for the James Madison softball team a “public figure” is a hell of a stretch.

 

Division I athlete? I think I could make that argument. Especially playing for a national contender.

 

It’s softball.

Jennie Finch was a public figure. Beyond that? I don’t think so.