In the 1st quarter of 2019…

On March 1st and 22nd, Headline co-presented at the HSE’s Mid-West media briefing. This was organised for media professionals from across print, radio and online platforms, as well as, spokespeople from the Limerick region. The event brought together expertise from local Suicide Prevention Officers from the National Office of Suicide Prevention (NOSP), Headline, and the National Suicide Research Foundation (NSRF).

The briefing covered suicide prevention from a local context, an in-depth look at media guidelines on how best to report on suicide, limit contagion and support vulnerable audiences, the latest international and national research, and media consumption from the perspective of a person with lived experience of mental illness.

78% of attendees* had not received training in suicide reporting guidelines prior to the Limerick event. There was a 50% increase in media workers’ confidence in their ability to report on suicidal themes (Column A below), a 50% increase in their understanding of suicide reporting guidelines (B), and a 25% increase in media workers’ confidence in their ability to identify appropriate services for vulnerable audiences (C).

Attendees were also asked where would they seek advice on how to report a particular story concerning suicide themes. Each source of expertise saw increases which, maybe most importantly, shows attendees desire to seek out advice at all.

*Results from survey participants both before and after Limerick event, March 2019.

We have been continuing our monitoring of articles which report on mental ill health and suicide with our external data partner. We are constantly refining what and how we monitor on a weekly basis, so that we can gather the most accurate and relevant data relating to the way in which suicide and mental ill health is covered in Irish media. We now have the results of our data monitoring for January and February 2019.

New for 2019, is our analysis of where content on suicide and mental illness originates. The nature of online content now means Irish audiences have access to 100,000s of news sources across the world. The nature of media ownership and the increasing trend towards shared resources among large parent companies means Irish audiences are exposed to content on “Irish” news sites which may have been produced by a journalist or digital content creator in the UK, US or elsewhere.

It is an incredibly challenging time to work in news. News room resources are becoming more and more squeezed and journalists and producers are expected to produce enormous amounts of content in smaller windows of time. In a digital age, the pressure to publish first is also increasing. We want to add some additional context to the occurrence of reporting breaches in Ireland, as we know from experience and international research, that predominately, journalists and producers in Ireland want to get reporting on these topics right. In January and February 2019, we see that just over 40% of guideline breaches were generated from content outside of Ireland, namely journalists from other countries working for a larger international parent company, or news agencies, like Reuters or AFP. This is where the role of digital editors becomes so important, especially in relation to content on the suicide or mental ill health of an internationally known person or celebrity. International standards of reporting vary significantly, and we would ask that content originating from agencies or international partners be thoroughly checked for suicide or mental illness reporting breaches before publishing.

A criticism of Headline has been that we actively look for the bad stuff, for the content that is reported in the least responsible way. Since mid-2018 we have been actively looking for the good examples of journalism to showcase in our workshops and presentations, and in doing that, it has highlighted a wider issue. Throughout 2018 we noticed, through monitoring and informal conversations with Shine frontline staff, the stark absence of content relating to mental illness that had little or nothing to do with violence. Violence, as a result of mental illness, is not an accurate representation of the vast majority of people in Ireland living with a mental illness.

The influencing power of the media on audiences’ perception of the world and people around them is well established. If audiences only ever see or hear about a severe mental illness when it is alongside stories of violence and crime, that is all audiences will ever see when they think of severe mental illness.  We also noted, from the Challenges research by Dr. Anne O’ Brien (see above), that journalists and producers found reporting on mental illness particularly difficult. This was due in part to lack of access to people with lived experience, as well as a lack of understanding of more serious mental ill health difficulties. We wanted to look at representation in greater detail to see what the outcome of these anecdotal observations were. We therefore decided to undertake a test month from 11th February – 11th March, analysing coverage of Bipolar & Schizophrenia in the 200+ online Irish media sources we currently monitor.

In our analysis, we wanted to get an overall sense of the type of representation that these two illnesses are given in media available to Irish audiences. Bipolar appeared in 32 articles and Schizophrenia appeared in 36 articles. We looked at whether the content originated in Ireland or outside, and we also broke down the type of coverage within the following categories:

71.6% of all content on Bipolar & Schizophrenia originated in Ireland.

One of the clearest, and possibly most staggering outcomes from the data, is the representation of Schizophrenia. Of all mentions of Schizophrenia in Irish media*, 72.22 % was in relation to violent crime. Of these articles, 84.6% originated in Ireland. We will be continuing to monitor these two terms throughout 2019 so that we can have a fuller picture of how these illnesses are represented and reported. We hope that by highlighting the type of coverage given to Bipolar & Schizophrenia we can promote responsible and accurate reporting and also encourage journalists, content creators and producers to give a fuller, richer account of people living with mental illness in Ireland.

*We currently monitor 200+ online news sources in Ireland. Not all of this content originates in Ireland. See our content origin statistics for further information.

For several years, Headline has travelled around the country delivering presentations on the reporting guidelines to journalism students, to ensure the next generation of media professionals is equipped with the knowledge they need to report on stories containing themes of suicide or mental ill health. We have redeveloped our presentation to include the most up to date information and examples of guideline breaches, and we began delivering this new workshop-style format at the beginning of 2019. During our workshops we now speak to students about the types of mental health issues more commonly reported, and how they are represented. Currently, mental health difficulties that appear most frequently in Irish media are ones which may be viewed as being more socially acceptable, or for which there is more access and resources available to journalists. These include depression, anorexia, anxiety, and suicide, among others. In other cases, illnesses such as Schizophrenia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Psychosis are most frequently reported in relation to violent crime. By highlighting the imbalance in coverage of mental illnesses, we aim to encourage more representative reporting of these issues by future journalists.

We evaluate each workshop so that we better understand the impact of our programme on students’ attitudes to mental health and suicide, and their confidence in reporting on these topics. This enables us to gather constructive feedback, and continually look at ways in which we can enhance our material and remain relevant to industry needs. We hope to release the first evaluations in next quarter’s review.

In the coming months we will be continuing to develop new fictional role plays, based on realistic events in Ireland, so that we can present students with challenging and relevant scenarios that will equip them for their future work. The feedback from students this quarter has been invaluable in planning new scenarios, as it became particularly clear that students were keen to engage with more challenging content relating to suicides of public figures and murder-suicides. We look forward to developing these over the summer to be delivered during the next academic year.