දිවි තොර කරගැනීම් සහ මාධ්‍ය ආචාර ධර්ම

Abstract

During the month of May 2022, several newspapers and tv news telecasts reported on suicide without adhering to media ethical guidelines on reporting on suicide. When reporting on a father who had died by suicide due to economic hardships, Lankadeepa irrelevantly mentioned the method of suicide and did not run helplines. Silumina and Sunday Mawbma that reported on a murder-suicide attempt sensationalised the incident by giving explicit descriptions of the event, giving prominence to a suicide news, and publishing pictures of the location of the suicide attempt. The news reports did not carry helplines either. Divaina, Aruna and Mawbima reported on a death by suicide by an army soldier who was guarding a filling station. Despite the news being of public interest, the news report did not include helplines. Mawbima ran three news reports on three different suicide news on the same day, where the method of suicide was irrelevantly included and helplines were not mentioned. Derana and Aruna reported the story of an Indian person who took his life in Sri Lanka. The method of suicide was shown via CCTV footage, attributing to explicit details of the incident. The location of suicide was also shown. Helplines were not included in the news either.