Grieving daughter says SCMP’s year-late apology over ‘reprehensible’ suicide coverage falls short

A grieving daughter who lobbied the South China Morning Post (SCMP) to revise its policies on suicide reporting says a year-late apology and correction “falls short” and “changes nothing.”

South China Morning Post (SCMP). Photo: SCMP PR.

US-based sports journalist Sofia Schwarzwalder wrote to the SCMP’s reporters a year ago over their article about the suicide of her father Brian. A report entitled “Hong Kong police find purported suicide note linked to mangled body case” was published last August 5.

Having not received a response, she published an open letter on Wednesday urging the newspaper to account for the “reprehensible and irresponsible coverage of his death and the scene,” make revisions, and publicly commit to improved policies.

In the letter shared on LinkedIn, she wrote: “The paper not only decided to cover it, but to include graphic descriptions of his corpse including that his ‘head and leg were missing when found’ and that ‘the source told the Post that the head was not detached from the body, but sunken inside, possibly due to the impact of the fall.’ It also wrote that ‘Police discovered the leg across the road outside St Francis’ Canossian College.’ These details are so disturbing that I have moral qualms about quoting what the Post published without providing a warning for people who will read this letter.”

Schwarzwalder also criticised the inclusion of information about a suicide note, and personally identifying details from an unnamed source, adding: “I don’t have the words to express the harm Post’s article caused. To me. To my family. To my father’s friends who learned he had died while reading your article. To the public who read descriptions that were disturbing, even if they didn’t know the deceased.”

She said the article “will haunt me for the rest of my life,” and that she wanted to prevent the situation recurring in the future.

At the request of Schwarzwalder, a news wire article about the incident written by news wire Agence France-Presse was removed from HKFP’s website.

Correction ‘changes nothing’

The SCMP did not respond to HKFP’s enquiries last week, but its public Ethics Code states that their journalists ought not “pander to prurience, indecency and sensationalism, using special caution when reporting news involving violence, crime, suicide, or minors.”

By the end of last week, some details had been removed from the article in question with an updated headline and correction reading: “This story has been edited to remove distressing details of a suicide case. It was initially covered as a case of a body being found, but was later confirmed to be a suicide.”

Photo: Sofia Schwarzwalder, via LinkedIn.

On Saturday, Schwarzwalder shared a response on behalf of SCMP management saying the paper adheres to “strict standards of professionalism and editorial ethics” when covering suicides, adding helpline information to stories. It said that Schwarzwalder’s father’s name was omitted from the report, and that suicides are only reported if the people involved or the circumstances are significant enough to keep readers informed.

“In this particular case, there was initially a lot of confusion as we had no official confirmation of a suicide, but the story had changed completely by the end of the day. In retrospect we should have done our due diligence and vetted some of the information after the facts became clear,” the letter said, adding an apology for the distress caused.

In response, Schwarzwalder thanked the public for their support and concern: “The response I received from the SCMP office of corporate affairs and communications falls short of what my father and the public deserve. The paper did not commit to following its own policies in the future, let alone revising them.”

“The SCMP changed the content and headline of their article yesterday, 366 days after it was published. That changes nothing. Especially given that I emailed the reporters a week after it was published last year,” she added.

She told HKFP that dozens of supporters had written to SCMP publisher Tammy Tam.

The SCMP is no longer listed as a member of the Trust Project, but the Hong Kong Journalists Association recommends that all outlets follow its guidelines on suicide coverage to avoid sensationalism, personal details, romanticisation, and detailed descriptions of the suicide method.