Your podcast discovery platform
Curious minds select the most fascinating podcasts from around the world. Discover hand-piqd audio recommendations on your favorite topics.
piqer for: Boom and bust Health and Sanity Global finds Doing Good
Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
The Quest To Bring Suicides Down To Zero
Reporting on suicides is complicated and should be done with the greatest care. There’s the risk of copycat effect, the risk of stigmatising, victimising, dramatising and getting it wrong. This in-depth article on Mosaic Science shows how it can be done right.
It talks about language and decriminalisation. For example: suicide laws changed in 1961 (it was a crime until then) but the stigma endures, as many media outlets still use the term ‘commit’ rather than ‘to die by suicide’.
There are many powerful sources in this story, including a suicide survivor who explains the feeling of regret:
“Of the 25 or 26 people who have survived jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge and are still alive, 19 have said they felt instant regret the second their hand left the rail,” he says. “The act of suicide is separate from the thought of suicide.”
Most poignant is the father of a son who died by suicide. He is on a quest towards prevention and believes breaking the silence around the issue is key: “If my son had been taught about mental health in the same way he was taught about diet, citizenship, physical health, he would have understood that it’s OK to feel shit. But despite his brilliance, he didn’t have the education to help him come forward.”
