Media
How not to report a tragedy
Monday’s tragic MRT death could have been reported with better finesse. Littlespeck.
Nov 1, 2006

In the latest MRT death at Clementi Station, The Straits Times reported: “ABOUT 11,700 westbound MRT passengers were faced with a 47-minute service disruption on Monday (Oct 30) evening, after a man was hit by a train at the Clementi station.”

The 50-year-old man died at the scene. Suicide is not confirmed, but if it is, it’s becoming too frequent these days. Every time it happens, it's an image blow to the government (any serious government).

The radio more or less reported it in the same vein. The train was disrupted and people were affected by the delay, etc.

Our reporters and editors in Singapore should have exercised a higher level of sensitivity when reporting such news.

Here is a tragic loss of a human being, and the Singapore media is more concerned about the inconvenience of the train passengers. The victim was made to look like a faceless non-entity.

Surely whoever the sad person was, a human life should warrant greater attention than passengers’ temporary inconvenience. Instead the train delay became the story's main point.

That both channels of news arrived at the same stance – disrupted services over a possible suicide - has raised talk of an unseen authority telling the media to play down MRT suicides.

A worse comparative example would be a driver who knocks down and injures a man, alights to look at his car and exclaims, “Thank heavens, it’s not too badly dented.”

Maybe the journalists were labouring under the impression that readers – tens of thousands - were more interested in MRT services than an individual tragedy.

If that’s the case, they would be guilty of promoting an uncaring public attitude.

At any rate, Ibelieve that from now on, the Singapore media (whether under official advice or not) will play down such suicide reports.

(Actually it had - for many years - stopped reporting suicides, like jumping off a building, self-hanging, etc, for good reasons: protection of families and children).

But the difference now is the Internet, which is under no such self-restraint.

Frankly speaking, if the number of MRT suicides continues to mount, I would support avoid reporting details of such deaths (but not the statistics) to avoid encouraging wannabe’s.

Today I am just against the media's reporting that impliedly devalues human life, however rich or poor the victim is.

By Seah Chiang Nee