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*How media helps push us off suicide cliff



Apr 22, 2014 10:53 EST
I’ve seen it again and again in my more than twenty years of opposing assisted suicide: the media promote suicide in the guise of reporting the news. Indeed, these days, it is almost a universal rule.

Here’s the biased–both by what is reported and what isn’t–usual pattern:

1. Make sure the headline promotes assisted suicide, particularly important since many won’t read the story;

2. Introduce an ill person with terrifying disease–often ALS (motor neurone disease), the bloody flag of the euthanasia movement;

3. The patient just wants to die when a “line” is crossed;

4. But mean society won’t let doctors prescribe death, so he has to die in a way he would rather not (take your pick) violently, with his family absent, in Switzerland, in agony, etc.;

5. If the law would only permit doctor-prescribed suicide, he could die at home, in his own bed, surrounded by the things and people he loves;

6. Write the story as if it appears or implies that the suicide is a necessity;

7. Never mention suicide prevention and how people similarly situated were helped not to kill themselves and are glad to be alive;

8. Don’t fairly present opposing arguments, e.g. no quotes, quotes from priest only, no or bare a mention of reasons to keep assisted suicide illegal;

9. Immediately have the suicidal hero–or a “compassionate” family doctor–slap down the concern;

10. Don’t describe the horrors of Belgium, the Netherlands, or Switzerland–oft discussed here;

11. Assure that assisted suicide guidelines will prevent abuse–without noting it hasn’t worked out that way wherever society widely embraces euthanasia consciousness.
Et voila! You have a story in which the reader is left nodding, “Of COURSE the law should be changed so he could die as he pleases.” 


National Review Online