Bridgend Watch: A Look At The Cult Of Suicides In The Media
SUICIDE Watch: Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of teenage suicides in Bridgend
THE SUN: Jenna Parry’s face looks out from the cover of the Sun
“ANOTHER MYSTERY TEEN DEATH,” says the paper. “17 hangings, 13 months, 1 town, 1 question..WHY?”
Above a picture of swings, a see-saw and a climbing frame, the legend: “Place where shadow of death stalks the young”
“The stunned people of Bridgend found themselves living in the shadow of death yesterday after yet another young suicide victim was found hanging from a tree…While police and politicians maintained there was no link between Jenna Parry’s death and SIXTEEN previous hangings in the area, local people feared otherwise”
Who needs facts and the results of a police investigation when you have “fear”. And the shadowy internet
Michael Bennett found Miss Parry’s body as he was out walking his dog, as is ever the way of things. “In an apparent reference to Bebo, he added: ‘Youngsters need to talk to people like their family, not spend all their time on computers or watching television'”
Reports the Sun: “Like many of the others, Jenna had her own pages on teenage social networking website Bebo. Police will examine her computer.” Rachel White, a friend of the dead girl, says: “Her Bebo site will probably be turned into a memorial as well”
David Morris, Assistant Chief Constable of South Wales, “admitted the cluster of suicides in the Bridgend area was unique because of the ‘exceptional’ numbers involved. But he claimed there was no evidence of a mass pact”
He says:
“A number have access to social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace. But we have not found any suggestion of any links or influence from these sites to have encouraged these young people to take their lives. These are vulnerable young people and there is a view that taking one’s own life may become an acceptable option, but we have found no evidence of any link between them”
Not to worry, though, because the Sun is on the case, and it has one line of questioning
DAILY MIRROR: “SUICIDE No 17 IN THE TOWN OF NO HOPE – JENNA, 16 FOUND HANGED.”
“There is only one topic of conversation amongst a group of teenagers outside an off-licence in Bridgend – the apparent suicide of Jenna Parry,” says the Mirror’s man on the scene, stood by a group of teenagers who – and this a bonus – are hanging out by the booze shop. If reporter Nic North can mention the teens’ weight – and let’s pray to god they are obese – and their smoking, his story will have the lot
But before he asks them for their views on Iraq, he brings the economy into it: “Young people are pessimistic for their Jobs in local retail parks or fast food outlets is the best they can hope for.” Pretty much all teens, unless you’re Peaches Geldof, a Royal earning a crust, a model of a footballer, are pessimistic about the low-paid work they are offered
Gareth says bleakly: “I can understand why they’re killing themselves. It takes a trigger, a row with your girlfriend, another job rejection, to push you over the edge.” He says the mood in Bridgend is “fear”. He explains: “Every morning, you’re waking up thinking, Who’s it gonna be today? It’s got really freaky. There’s a sense that the place is cursed, a losing town’s curse.”
A curse! Now the Mirror is getting somewhere.
DAILY EXPRESS: “More suicide mystery”
Says David Morris: “The link between the deaths isn’t the internet – it is the way the media is reporting the news”
“Jenna belonged to two websites,” says the Express. “Experts warn of internet link”
Says the Express of Mr Morris’s comment: “This is nonsense. Many of the deaths occurred before there was any news coverage.” But then many suicides never make into the pages of the national press. Maybe when they did, impressionable teenagers read about it? Maybe all 17 suicides read the Daily Express?
DAILY MAIL: “The tragedy of Jenna, suicide town’s 17th victim”
It’s the town that’s killing them
THE TIMES: “Schools on alert after 17th Bridgend suicide”
Says the paper: “Experts are to be sent into every school in Bridgend as part of an urgent strategy drawn up to halt the spate of suicides in a small area of South Wales that claimed a 17th young victim yesterday.”
Says David Morris: “These are vulnerable young people. Taking one’s own life may be becoming an acceptable option to young people for issues that they are facing.”
So no curse? No Internet plot? But this mass suicide is a phenomenon, Bridgend is like Jonestown with a broadband connection?
Notes the paper: “Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 20 people – 14 of them young men – took their lives in the Bridgend area in 2006, while Merthyr Tydfil had 10 suicides and Rhondda Cynon Taff 18”
Jenna Parry is the 17th suicide in Bridgend since the start of 2007
THE INDEPENDENT: “Task force considers the ‘Werther effect'”
The Sorrow of Young Werther is the story of a young artist who shoots himself after an ill-fated love affair. “Following its publication in 1774 there was a series of reports of young men who took their own lives in the same way, which led to the book being banned”
Was Master Werther on Bebo?
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “What hope can we offer Bridgend’s teenagers?”
Jan Moir pictures the scene in her mind’s eye: “It is hard to imagine what kind of despair inched each of them towards the thought and then the deed: to fashion the knot, to slip the fixings before the final swing into oblivion.” Is it so hard? “Teenagers are emotional creatures whose taste runs to the gothic,” says Moir. Was she ever a teenager?
“In each case, the method was the same; only the location changed. One youngster strung himself up from a washing line, one in a park, yet another from a tree; terrible and strange fruit hanging in the Welsh valleys. Most were hanged in their own bedrooms; the worst of surprises for a parent opening the door on to an unforgettable scene… Exposure to suicide can lead to what psychiatrists call contagion, and the fear is that more vulnerable teens will succumb to the death talk in the air and copycat-kill themselves. Is this what happened yesterday?
The more excitable newspapers have a weakness for outrage. Together they make an uncomfortable alliance. Certainly, the repeated and sensational suggestion that the dead youngsters are part of a internet death pact or cult is particularly unhelpful. Apart from anything else, if it were a cult, the deaths would be more ritualistic and flamboyant, there would be more of them and they would have happened in a shorter space of time for maximum impact”
Moir does not try to imagine how cult members might kill themselves. But Anorak readers can feel free…
Posted: 20th, February 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Tabloids Comments (15) | TrackBack | Permalink
