The Hindu scores in responsible reporting of suicides

Survey used a scorecard to assess and rate reports on suicide incidents by 9 newspapers across India

The Hindu has topped in an assessment of multiple English newspapers for responsible reporting of suicide-related news. The study — The Application of a Scorecard Tool for Assessing and Engaging Media on Responsible Reporting of Suicide-Related News in India — was conducted by the Department of Psychiatry, Voluntary Health Services and SNEHA Suicide Prevention Centre, Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Indian Law Society and Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne. The authors developed a scorecard to assess and rate media reports on suicides. The scorecard consisted of 10 positive and 10 negative parameters. They applied the scorecard to 1,318 reports on suicide from nine English newspapers with the highest readership in the country, between April 1 and June 20, 2020. The average positive score across all newspapers was 1.32 and average negative score was 3.31.