The British Medical Association's recommendation to the Home Secretary that
newspaper reports of inquests in suicide cases should be severely restricted, as reports of divorce cases are, is not likely to get much further, and in my opinion should not. The two are by no means on all fours. Details in divorce cases were frequently such as to gratify the salacious-minded, and there were one or two papers which notoriously specialised in them. In the matter of suicides it is argued, first, that reports of such cases stimulate a tendency to suicide in those who read them. That seems highly doubtful ; and in any case it would surely be not the details of the method followed but the fact itself that would create the tendency ; and it is not suggested that the fact itself should be suppressed. The second argument is that such reports as are published at present give pain to relatives. No doubt they do. But so do, or should, reports of cases of fraud or rape or drunk-and-disorderliness. The business of newspapers is to purvey news ; one criticism of them is that they give too much space to what is not news at all. In the selection and handling of news they must be guided by their staffs' judgement and good taste. At a time when the need' for guarding the freedom of the Press vigilantly is more urgent than ever a proposal for external restraints is not to be welcomed. This particular proposal, of course, would require legislation, of which there can be no prospect in thd present Parliament at any rate.
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