Suicide of Minors in the Spanish Press: Analysis from the Perspective of Public Interest and the Limits of Freedom of Information

Abstract

Every year, more than 700,000 people die by suicide worldwide, a quarter of whom are between 15 and 29 years of age. In Spain, suicide has surpassed road traffic accidents as the leading non-natural cause of death in this age group. Although its overall incidence remains low, the number of suicide attempts continues to rise, indicating an upward trend. Despite being recognized as a significant public health issue, the media often refrains from reporting on suicide to prevent the Werther effect, thereby avoiding the potential propagation of suicidal behavior. This is a form of self-censorship in the exercise of freedom of information, a right recognized by the Spanish Constitution, which also undermines the right of citizens to receive such content. The Spanish Constitutional Court has determined that public interest is a mandatory requirement to endorse the legitimacy of a news item in case of a clash with any of the rights that legally limit freedom of information. This article aims to analyze whether, in those exceptional cases in which the rule of silence is broken, the information on suicide in young people is in line with the jurisprudential concept of public interest, above privacy, honor or self-image and, especially, above the protection of children and adolescents. As a research method, this study analyzes a selection of news articles on suicides of minors, published in Spanish digital newspapers and compiled into a self-developed database. These articles are examined through the lens of the Spanish Constitutional Court’s doctrine on freedom of information. The findings indicate that public interest is unequivocally justified when news coverage focuses on aggregated data regarding suicide or suicide attempts among minors. However, when reporting on the suicide of an individual minor, the justification from the perspective of freedom of information depends on the specifics of each case, requiring a careful balance between public interest and the protection of fundamental rights.

1. Introduction

1.1. Incidence of Suicide in Childhood and Adolescence

The World Health Organization (2024) estimates that more than 720,000 people die by suicide each year worldwide, surpassing the number of deaths from malaria, lung cancer, HIV/AIDS or homicides separately. Suicide has been defined as a lethal self-harm act carried out with the evident intention of dying (Turecki & Brent, 2016) or as a death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with any intent to die as a result of the behavior (Crosby et al., 2011, p. 23). It is preceded by other behaviors ordered in an ascending scale—ideation, planning and attempt—(O’Connor et al., 2011, p. 9), with a plurality of causative factors, among which mental health disorders stand out (Turecki et al., 2019; World Health Organization, 2024). It is recognized by the World Health Organization (2024) as a serious public health problem that, above individual tragedies, alters the lives of other people. While the scientific literature indicated an average of 6 people affected per case (Shneidman, 1972), recent studies have raised the number of people affected by suicide to 135 (Cerel et al., 2019), among whom are friends, family and the subject’s own community, with relevant economic, social and emotional consequences (Hegerl et al., 2009). Although it is more frequent in adults, in the 15–29 age group, suicide has become the third leading cause of death globally after road traffic accidents and interpersonal violence, as well as in adolescents between 15 and 19 years of age (World Health Organization, 2024). In 2019, the WHO estimated that more than 160,000 people between the ages of 15 and 29 had taken their own lives (World Health Organization, 2021), which represents around a quarter of all suicides worldwide, and in regions such as South-East Asia, it has become the main cause of death among young people (World Health Organization, 2014).

In Spain, the National Institute of Statistics (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2024) has identified suicide as the leading cause of non-natural death from 2008 to 2023, currently doubling the number of deaths caused by road traffic accidents. In 2023, with 4116 deaths, the previously unbroken threshold of 4000 deaths was exceeded for the second consecutive year. There is a slight upward trend, with a rate that after 2010 has been consolidating above 8 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants, and which brings Spain closer to the world average—situated at 9 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants—and the European average—which is at 10.5 per 100,000 inhabitants—(World Health Organization, 2021).

In the year 2023, 354 suicide deaths were recorded in Spain between the ages of 15 and 29 and has been higher than road traffic accidents as a non-natural cause of death in young people since 2019 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2024). Furthermore, suicide attempts in adolescents have increased in the last five years, as set out in a dedicated report by the ANAR Foundation’s Research and Studies Center (2022). In the last decade, the number of suicide attempts handled by its helpline has increased by 25-fold. The same study reports that only 44 percent of these minors later found the appropriate care in the public or private health systems. Other studies confirm this rise in demand for emergency mental health care by children and adolescents since 2020, with increased attention on suicidal thoughts and self-harm (Fortea et al., 2023; Maciá-Casas et al., 2024; Paricio-del Castillo et al., 2024). Although in 2023 the number of minors who died by suicide accounted for two percent of the total number of deaths by self-harm, so it is still a very residual pattern of behavior in Spain (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2024), it is no less alarming, given its upward trend since the beginning of the last decade.

1.2. Media Silence and Self-Censorship

Despite the severity of the issue of suicide in Spain, the traditional response of the media and journalists for decades has been to avoid reporting on suicides, with only a few exceptions. This media silencing is based on the conviction that some news about self-induced death can trigger contagion or provoke what has been proven in the scientific literature as the Werther effect (Phillips, 1974). But at the same time, this practice of silence ignores the potential for the mass media to educate the population on detection and prevention, known among researchers as the Papageno effect (Niederkrotenthaler et al., 2010) or the power of the press to exert pressure on public authorities to improve preventive policies (World Health Organization, 2012).

The repeated silencing of this reality over time translates into a kind of self-censorship (Olmo López & García-Fernández, 2015), which implies the voluntary and deliberate rejection by the media and journalists of part of the exercise of freedom to freely communicate truthful information included in article 20.1.d. of the Spanish Constitution (Constitución Española, 1978), which in turn affects the right of citizens to freely access such content (García-Fernández et al., 2024). This silence is broken only in exceptional and often extreme cases, frequently associated with suicides in public spaces, of famous people or connected with crimes of gender violence. This practice contributes to feeding the marginal and distorted image of suicide. In addition, it widens the gap between the real demographic features of the problem and its media projection, damaging the collective awareness of the dimension of suicide as a public health problem (Pirkis et al., 2007; Machlin et al., 2013).

Therefore, it is reasonable to ask whether this strategy of silence may have deprived society of the information necessary for suicide prevention—causes, signs, support strategies, etc., or whether it has delayed an open debate on the political scope of the issue. But it is also worth considering whether the paucity of news regarding suicide equates to a lack of information regarding other circumstances closely associated with self-inflicted death and whose dissemination may be crucial for democratic decision making. Among these issues are impoverishment, evictions, increasing psychosocial risks in the workplace, bullying, various forms of addiction, the worsening of mental health and other emerging problems that indicate failures in social organization (García-Fernández et al., 2024).

Although the World Health Organization (2014) openly points to the mass media as co-responsible actors for the increase in suicides, due to the risk of imitation or the Werther effect that certain ways of covering these events can generate, at the same time, it also points to them as indispensable factors in prevention. Mental health professionals and organizations of survivors echo this idea and demand visibility and awareness of the problem to facilitate early prevention and intervention (Pérez, 2017; Noriega, 2019). Specifically, the World Health Organization, based on scientific research, has isolated among the risk factors practices such as the publication of sensationalist information about suicides, the detailing of the method or the exaltation and glorification of certain aspects that can lead to a pernicious amplification of suicidal behavior (World Health Organization & International Association for Suicide Prevention, 2017; World Health Organization, 2023). In fact, since the beginning of the century, this organization has published successive updates to its guide of recommendations for journalists on how to responsibly report on suicide in a way that generates positive effects and, in parallel, reduces the possibilities of the amplification of this behavior. Other agents at an international level have subsequently joined this trend. In Spain, the Ministry of Health (Ministerio de Sanidad, 2020) has published a guide for journalists following the World Health Organization’s lead.

1.3. The Public Interest of Suicide from a Juridical Perspective

From a general and theoretical perspective, without delving into specific cases, the information on suicide published in the Spanish press aligns with the juridical concept of public interest as established by the Spanish Constitutional Court, the highest interpreter of the Constitution (García-Fernández et al., 2024).

In this regard, the Constitutional doctrine asserts in Judgment 173/1995 of November 21, Legal Basis 2, that people must be widely informed on all kinds of issues, since “only those societies that can receive truthful information on the most important aspects of community life are in a position to subsequently exercise their rights and duties as citizens” (Tribunal Constitucional, 1995).

Regarding suicide, its societal relevance in Spain is evident, as it accounts for 11 deaths per day and affects individuals across all socio-economic strata. Furthermore, the public interest in this issue can be both national and local in scope. It may derive from the subject matter itself, in cases involving anonymous individuals or from the identity of the person involved, particularly when it concerns a public or well-known figure (García-Fernández et al., 2024). There is, therefore, a space of legitimacy for the publication of this type of news within the exercise of the right to information that can be defended against the limits of this right. These limitations, as outlined in Article 20.4 of the Spanish Constitution, include all rights recognized under Title I, with explicit reference to the rights to honor, privacy, personal image and the protection of minors (Constitución Española, 1978).

However, what is considered to be of public interest from the perspective of the Spanish legal system and the journalistic notion of public interest are distinct constructs. While they may intersect at certain points, they are not equivalent. The legal notion of public interest has open profiles and has evolved over decades through Constitutional Court rulings on conflicts involving freedom of information. On the contrary, the journalistic concept of public interest is shaped by the professional criteria of journalists and media organizations. This notion is influenced by factors such as the proximity, topicality, magnitude and opportunity of a news item, but also, in a more sensationalist sense, personalization and entertainment (Mac Quail, 1998, pp. 294–330). In the case of suicide, some scholars argue that it becomes a matter of public interest when it involves a well-known individual, a young person or unusual circumstances (Beam et al., 2018) or if it has occurred in a public space, has required the attention of the security forces or accompanies a homicide (Jamieson et al., 2003).

In the event of a legal dispute, it would be the public interest determined by jurisprudence that would serve as a criterion to decide on the legal legitimacy of a news item when it clashes with any of the fundamental rights that serve as limits to the right to information. The Constitutional Court holds the authority to establish what is meant to be of public interest, independent of the criteria employed by the media. This distinction is explicitly stated in Judgment 25/2019 of February 25, Legal Basis 9 (Tribunal Constitucional, 2019):

“the general interest of an abstract debate should not be confused with the public relevance of the specific information disclosed; nor should the curiosity fueled by the media, by attributing a news value to the publication of the images that are the subject of controversy, be confused with a public interest worthy of constitutional protection.”

Similarly, in Judgment 134/1999 of July 15, Legal Basis 8, the Court asserts (Tribunal Constitucional, 1999):

“the public relevance of certain information must not be confused with its newsworthiness, since it is not the media that are called upon by the Spanish Constitution to determine what is or is not of public relevance, nor can this be confused with the diffuse object of a non-existent right to satisfy the curiosity of others.”

1.4. Objective: The Public Interest of Suicide in Minors

The protection of youth and childhood limits the freedom of information according to Article 20.4 of the Spanish Constitution (Constitución Española, 1978). Additionally, the interest in the well-being and health of children and adolescents in society has been reflected in various laws based on Article 39 of the Constitution. In this article, the public authorities are committed to the comprehensive protection of children and to integrating international treaties on childhood into the Spanish legal system. Thus, the Organic Law on the Legal Protection of Minors (Ley Orgánica 1/1996, de 15 de enero, de Protección Jurídica del Menor, de modificación parcial del Código Civil y de la Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, 1996) and the Organic Law on the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents against Violence (Ley Orgánica 8/2021, de 4 de junio, de protección integral a la infancia y la adolescencia frente a la violencia, 2021), among others, regulate different fragments of the reality of minors with a spirit that, in a cross-cutting manner, permeates other legal norms. In summary, a comprehensive legal framework has been established based on the premise that the future of individuals as adults, as well as the future of our culture, economy and civilization, significantly depends on the dignified conditions under which people develop during their childhood and adolescent stages.

When the tacit rule of silence is broken, journalistic publications related to the suicide of minors are exposed to the same doctrine outlined by the Constitutional Court in its jurisprudence, which points to the relevance or public interest of the information as a necessary requirement in the face of a possible clash between freedom of information and its limits.

Therefore, any information on suicides affecting minors and young people is subject to extra compliance, since it is limited in a generic way by the so-called rights of personality, but also in a specific way by the special protection that the Constitution provides for the youngest members of society.

It should be emphasized that the above-mentioned rights of personality can of course be exercised while alive by minors and their legal guardians. But after death, and that includes suicide, they continue to leave a trace of their effectiveness. This potential is much more evident with regard to the right to privacy because it has an impact on the family scope that goes beyond the individual (Carreras Serra, 2008, pp. 14–20; Urías, 2009, pp. 72–180). The Constitutional Court refers to this issue in Judgment 190/1996 of November 25, Legal Basis 2 (Tribunal Constitucional, 1996):

“… as made possible by art. 20.4 CE and within the framework of the principles and values that inform our Fundamental Rule, Organic Law 1/1982, of May 5, on the Civil Protection of the Right to Honor, Privacy and Self-Image, establishes that the memory of a deceased person may limit the right to the communication of truthful information.”

In allusion to family privacy, the Constitutional Court Judgment 231/1988 of December 2 states in its Legal Basis 3 that “such privacy is not only pertains to the person directly affected, but, because of its moral repercussions, it is also a right of his or her family members” (Tribunal Constitucional, 1988).

Accordingly, this study adopts a general-to-specific approach, focusing on a precise practical manifestation of information related to lethal self-harm: the news coverage of suicide in childhood and adolescence. Thus, the main objective of this article is to answer the following question that arises when journalists break the rule of silence: do news reports on the suicide of minors comply with the requirement of public interest developed by the jurisprudence of the Spanish Constitutional Court?

From the perspective of the jurisprudential doctrine on the right to information, this study aims to find out whether the press can and should respond to the what, who, when, where, how and why of suicide when its active subjects are minors. Is this reporting, in whatever form, protected by the right to information? Are certain journalistic coverages protected by the right to information while others are not? It also aims to answer another question: are reports on the suicide of the youngest members of society legitimate when confronted with the right to privacy, honor and self-image and the specific protection of children and adolescents, i.e., the limits of freedom of information?

The purpose of this research, therefore, is to confront the reporting of suicide among minors with the juridical notion of public interest as a prerequisite for freedom of information. The aim is, on the one hand, to clarify whether the issue of the self-inflicted death of minors is compatible with the jurisprudential assumptions of public relevance and, on the other hand, whether this allows the treatment of the suicide of minors in the press to enjoy the protection and blessings of the right to information.

The legitimacy of the self-inflicted death of minors as a matter protected by the right to information depends on the quality of this link between reporting and the public interest. It also depends on the strength of this link whether the exercise of this right will prevail in a judicial conflict in the face of a hypothetical interference with the rights of personality, privacy, honor and self-image or the protection of youth and childhood.

There are conflicting elements at stake, such as the potential intrusion on the fundamental rights of these minors or their environment versus the need to disseminate this knowledge and information to the public or the risk of inciting copycat behavior versus the potential preventive influence of responsible information.

2. Materials and Methods

To address the proposed objective, it was necessary to integrate sources and approaches from both law and journalism. The research methodology involved analyzing a collection of news articles on suicides among minors, published in digital newspapers in Spain, which were compiled into a self-developed database. This database was examined in light of the Spanish Constitutional Court’s doctrine on the freedom of information. Specifically, the set of public interest criteria established by the Court in various rulings served as the analytical framework for evaluating the news coverage.

This database contains news articles about suicide published in Spanish digital newspapers between 2013 and 2022. The news set was compiled over a nine-year period using an automated search process based on the Google Alerts online software tool. This application was configured to provide a weekly report of news items containing the term “suicide”. To enhance the relevance of the results, the search parameters were adjusted to retrieve only what the application identified as the “best results”. Among the material obtained, those contents that were not published in newspapers were discarded and also those news items in which the word “suicide” has a metaphorical meaning and does not refer to self-inflicted death. To mitigate potential search gaps inherent in the Google Alerts algorithm, the process was supplemented with weekly manual searches of news archives in websites of major national digital newspapers, including El Mundo, ABC and El País. Newspapers with a nationwide reach were included in the database along with other regional or provincial ones, regardless of their ideological leaning or editorial focus.

Although this method has certain limitations, such as the possibility of missing some relevant articles, it provides a robust and comprehensive overview of suicide coverage in digital news media, particularly concerning child and adolescent suicide. Additionally, it offers both quantitative and qualitative insights into how this issue was reported during the study period.

From this sample, a set of 423 news items related to suicide and minors were identified, constituting 15 percent of the total material collected (2812 news items), as can be seen in Figure 1. This proportion significantly exceeds the actual statistical weight of this cause of death among minors. In fact, as previously mentioned, in 2023, deaths by suicide of minors accounted for less than 2% of all self-inflicted deaths in Spain (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2024).

A qualitative thematic content analysis was conducted to identify common patterns without predefined categories, allowing for the classification of news articles into subcategories, which will be detailed in the results section. From the total set of 423 news items, only the most paradigmatic and representative examples within each subcategory were selected for inclusion in this article.

On the other hand, more than 50 judgments issued by the Spanish Constitutional Court related to the right to information and its limits from 1981 to the present were reviewed—only the judgments expressly cited in this article are included in the bibliographical references section. Doctrinal arguments on the public interest or the relevance of journalistic information were traced in the rulings of the Constitutional Court. Furthermore, a detailed search was conducted for all judgments that specifically addressed the conflict between freedom of information and the rights of minors. The characteristics of the public interest outlined in this jurisprudence were utilized as a conceptual framework to assess whether suicide, when it involves children and adolescents, meets the criteria for public interest. The same doctrinal tool was also used to weigh up the balance of the rights, limits and legal values at stake when reporting the suicide of a minor.

Although none of the reviewed rulings specifically address the publication of suicide-related news, numerous judgments cover issues broad enough to be applicable to this topic. These include cases related to criminal investigations, missing persons, the harassment and sexual abuse of minors and the operation of the healthcare system. The legal reasoning in these rulings offers valuable insights that can be adapted to the issue of youth suicide.

The analysis of the intersection between the jurisprudence and news content was conducted in two stages: a general and a detailed comparison. Initially, legal arguments were broadly contrasted with the primary themes of each subgroup of the 423 news items. Subsequently, a more focused comparison was made, where specific doctrinal arguments from the jurisprudence were examined in relation to representative news stories from each category. This detailed analysis aimed to determine whether the public interest criterion was met in the news coverage and, simultaneously, to weigh whether this public interest can be overshadowed by the intrusion in the rights to honor, privacy or self-image of children or their relatives.

In summary, the main themes were extracted from both the case law and the news texts; then points of connection and analogy were identified between the concepts and situations dealt with in the case law and those reported in the news; and finally, the content of the judicial decisions was juxtaposed to the narrative of the journalistic texts, trying to understand how the Court might resolve these dilemmas according to its own jurisprudence if they were presented with them in court.

The subsequent critical analysis is the result of the confrontation between this conceptual jurisprudential framework and the news database. It presents some representative examples of news items in relation to specific judgments of the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence. Crossover points emerge that provide guidance as to whether or not these news items fall under the heading of public interest and whether or not they should be published under the legal umbrella of the freedom of information.

As a secondary goal, this work has also traced possible clashes with other fundamental rights to assess whether public health, personal dignity and integrity, privacy, honor, self-image and the rights of minors are safeguarded.

In addition, although the objective of this research is not to evaluate the degree of adherence of the news collected to the various responsible reporting guides available—the first and most essential, that of the World Health Organization in its multiple updates—these codes have been taken as references in those cases in which palpable discrepancies are observed.

3. Results: Analysis of Suicide News in Minors from the Perspective of Public Interest and the Limits of Freedom of Information

The concern of society as a whole for the well-being of the very young, mentioned above, justifies the journalistic attention to this age group, especially when it may be threatened. In this sense, it seems reasonable and logical to think that suicide among minors is an issue that no one can take lightly, especially because of the unexpected, abrupt and precipitous breakdown of the natural order of things. It is, therefore, difficult, in principle, to argue against child suicide as a matter of public interest. But it is quite another matter how this public interest is expressed in the media’s projection of the issue.

As illustrated in Figure 2, the number of news reports regarding self-induced deaths among children and adolescents collected for this study from 2013 to 2022 shows an upward trend. This trend is only interrupted in 2020, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thus, the news collected in this compilation can be classified into the following subgroups:

• An upward trend in suicidal behavior, mental health and suicide of minors during and after the COVID-19 pandemic;
• Initiatives to prevent suicide in minors;
• Suicide of minors related to bullying;
• Suicide of minors linked to sexual abuse or harassment;
• Suicide of minors and the use of social networks.

3.1. News on the Increase in Suicidal Behavior in Minors

Regarding the first subgroup, the increase in suicide deaths among minors, as well as the rise in suicidal ideation and attempts, particularly following the pandemic, have been reported in various ways in the digital editions of several newspapers:

Psychiatrists and judges warn of the rise in suicide attempts among minors in the Basque Country

The emotional impact of the pandemic could be behind the 60% increase in admissions for mental health problems among adolescents

(El Correo, 23 May 2021)

Anxiety disrupts the lives of children and young people

Psychiatric emergencies in minors have skyrocketed since the beginning of the pandemic. Depression and suicide attempts are intensifying among young people who are increasingly disarmed by frustration and uncertainty.

“We have gone from four suicide attempts a week by young people to more than 20.”

(El País, 21 June 2021)

Isabel Flórez, director of the Balearic Institute of Mental Health for Children and Adolescents: “We have seen fifty suicide attempts in minors since August”

“Hospital admissions for suicide attempts and eating disorders have increased by 70% until September”

(Diario de Mallorca, 10 October 2021)

“We are experiencing a record avalanche of consultations on suicides in Seville, especially girls and adolescents.”

Miguel Ruiz Veguilla, psychiatrist and coordinator of the suicide prevention plan of the Virgen del Rocío Hospital, warns about the deterioration of mental health that the pandemic could have aggravated

(ABC, 26 December 2021)

Francisco Villar: “Suicide attempts among minors increased by 300% in 2021”

This psychologist from Sant Joan de Déu Hospital calls for mobilization against this problem (aggravated by COVID-19), as was done with road traffic accidents

(El Periódico, 23 April 2022)

Youth suicide, a public health problem

Suicide attempts in minors reach the highest number in the last ten years

(La Vanguardia, 5 December 2022)

This type of news fits well with the idea conveyed by the Constitutional Court in the aforementioned Judgment 173/1995 of November 21, Legal Basis 2, where it defends that citizens should be truthfully informed of all types of matters affecting community life (Tribunal Constitucional, 1995). They also respond to the provisions of Judgment 159/1986 of December 16, Legal Basis 5, which states that “in order for citizens to be able to freely form their opinions and participate in a responsible manner in public affairs, they must also be fully informed” (Tribunal Constitucional, 1986).

In this news sample, the problem is dealt with in generic terms and without personalization. Therefore, there is no risk of clashing with the limits of freedom of information. The focus is not on specific individuals, but on the figures for suicide attempts and also on the qualitative assessments of mental health professionals. They expose a problem for which they are not prepared and for whose resolution they demand more resources. This type of news is a response to the concerns raised by health professionals and organizations such as the ANAR Foundation, which highlights an increase in suicidal behavior in the post-pandemic period. This rise is attributed to various factors including psychosocial risks such as isolation, domestic abuse, overcrowding, technology misuse, barriers to mental health care and poverty with associated issues like violence or the deterioration of mental health that children and adolescents find difficult to manage (ANAR Foundation’s Research and Studies Center, 2022). Therefore, the public relevance of this information is clear as it draws attention from society and public managers.

3.2. News on Prevention Initiatives

In another block, thematically close to the previous one, news items have been included that reflect the responses of different administrations to the warning signs of suicide. There are also reports that teach citizens how to recognize the early signs of suicidal behavior and how to seek help if necessary. Information such as the following is clearly intended as a public service:

Talking about suicide in schools, yes or no? The debate is on

Mental health professionals explain that preventing this type of behavior is betting on life, “not on a contagion effect”

(ABC, 13 March 2019)

Barcelona opens a WhatsApp line to prevent suicide among young people

Suicide attempts attended by hospitals have doubled in the last 6 months in Catalonia.

(La Vanguardia, 25 May 2021)

Signs to detect the risk of youth suicide

There are verbal and behavioral warning signs

(Las Provincias, 20 August 2021)

Eight hospitals test first national pilot plan to reduce teen suicide attempts: “The spike in girls is alarming”

Since 2006, attempts have tripled and exceeded 2000 per year. The Survive research project analyzes the effects of a six-session therapy on Spanish youths aged 13 to 18 who have already attempted to take their own lives.

(El País, 12 August 2022)

This type of news is clearly of interest to the community, in the sense established by constitutional case law. This is reflected, for example, in Judgment 115/2000 of May 5 of the Constitutional Court. In its Legal Basis 9, it states that public relevance exists “if we are dealing with facts or circumstances likely to affect all citizens, which has an unquestionable constitutional value” (Tribunal Constitucional, 2000). Or in the sense of the negative limitation established by Judgment 83/2002 of April 22, Legal Basis 1, where the Court emphasizes that what is of no significance to the community is what “does not affect all citizens or the economic or political life of the country, apart from mere curiosity” (Tribunal Constitucional, 2002b). On the other hand, the risk of clashing with other goods and legal rights in the formulation of these news items is diluted. In general, they follow the guidelines for responsible information about suicide.

3.3. News on Suicide and School Bullying

More conflictive in terms of clashing with other goods and the limits of the right to information, and also in terms of the risk of generating a contagion effect, is the publication of the numerous reports we have found referring to suicides preceded by situations of school bullying, both in its face-to-face and online modality. In the scientific literature, some authors link school bullying, cyberbullying and peer victimization with a higher risk of suicide (Klomek et al., 2010). Here there is an inevitable personalization of the news, in most cases, with a personal name, as can be seen in the following examples:

The Public Prosecutor’s Office charges two girls for Carla’s suicide

The teenager took her own life at the age of 14 in Gijón after a course of bullying at school The persecution that ended her life could constitute a crime against moral integrity “They called her cross-eyed, a lesbian and they poured water from the toilet over her”

(El Mundo, 25 September 2014)

“May my daughter’s suicide serve to make bullying a crime, not a simple misdemeanor.”

Monserrat Magnien, Carla’s mother, also calls for teachers to know how to detect school bullying

(ABC, 23 February 2015)

The case of Carla, who passed away in Gijón in 2013, her suicide was reported in the media alongside photographs of the minor, identifying details of her school and descriptions of the humiliations she endured, as recounted by her mother and legal representatives. This coverage resulted in a significant public exposure of the family’s privacy.

Something similar happened with Arancha’s suicide in 2015. She was a student at a high school in southern Madrid that received significant attention from digital newspapers. The publications included statements from her parents and those around her and details of the abuse she suffered:

A disabled teenager commits suicide after being bullied at school.

(…) She said goodbye to her friends by WhatsApp and jumped from the sixth floor of her block of apartments.(…) The minor, with intellectual and motor disabilities, told her teachers that another student at the center demanded money and coerced her with messages.

“I’m tired of living”, the girl wrote in a phone message to her friends before throwing herself down the stairwell.

(El País, 23 May 2015)

Another teenager charged in connection with Arancha’s suicide

The Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office has charged a teenager related to the suicide of the girl who was allegedly bullied at the Ciudad de Jaén high school in Usera.

(La Razón, 28 June 2015)

Regarding the same school in the south of Madrid, there is another case of suicide involving Andrés, who passed away years later. Several newspapers transcribed his suicide note.

A suicide letter, key in the arrest of the classmate accused of bullying

(…) Andrés had not appeared in class since Wednesday, March 27, but it was on Monday, April 1, when he decided to take his own life at home.

(ABC, 5 April 2019)

The suicide note of Andrés, the minor who was being bullied: “I had to endure six hours of fear”

(…) The three pages in the possession of the National Police and reproduced in the article were decisive for the agents to question his classmates and arrest the 17-year-old who supposedly made his life impossible and who days before taking his own life stole his mobile phone and keys.

(…)The young man begins his shocking story like this: “My name is Andrés and if you are reading this it is because I must have committed suicide.” “The fact is that everything started well until February 2019, when I fell into a nosedive. I had to endure six hours in which little by little I began to feel more afraid and that was my last month of life. I knew I was alone, that no one would help me.”

(El Mundo, 11 April 2019)

Another name appears, that of Diego, a pupil from another school in Madrid, whose photograph has been published in various media, along with testimonies from his parents, lawyers and school staff and also his suicide note:

Diego, 11 years old, before committing suicide: “I can’t stand going to school” This is how Carmen González remembers the moment she discovered that her son Diego, 11 years old, had just thrown himself out of the window from the fifth floor of the family home: […] “I searched like crazy all over the house and I saw, at the back of the kitchen, the open screen, I went over and… In the darkness I saw his shadow, on the floor. We live on the fifth floor.”

(El Mundo, 20 January 2016)

Madrid reviews the suicide of a minor for possible school bullying

“I can’t stand going to school and there’s no other way not to go”, Diego left written in a letter to his parents

(El País, 21 January 2016)

There is also the case of Kira, who passed away in 2021 in Barcelona. Her name was disclosed months after her suicide during a campaign initiated by her parents to raise awareness and decry the circumstances. This case has subsequently generated several news stories:

Suicide of a teenager investigated for possible ‘bullying’ at a school in Barcelona

The parents of the minor denounce the school Pare Manyanet school before the Mossos and the Síndic de Greuges (Catalan Ombudsman).

(La Vanguardia, 10 June 2021)

One year after Kira’s suicide: “Our life ended then”

The Mossos, Educació and the Ombudsman are still investigating whether the student from Pare Manyanet de Sant Andreu was suffering from bullying, as her parents claim The Regional Ministry and Barcelona City Council have appeared as a popular prosecution in the case investigating these events

(El Periódico, 18 May 2022)

In total, at least a dozen cases of suicide associated with school bullying have been reported in the media during the period under investigation. Perhaps it is in the news about suicides of minors in general, but especially in these, where it becomes more evident that, as dictated by the Constitutional Court in Judgment 62/1982 of October 15, Legal Basis 5, freedom of expression is a fundamental right that:

“includes not only information that is considered harmless or indifferent, or that is welcomed, but also information that may cause concern to the State or to a part of the population, as this is the result of pluralism, tolerance and the spirit of openness without which a democratic society cannot exist.”

(Tribunal Constitucional, 1982)

Beyond the content, in terms of the tone and form of the coverage, a whole range of options has been detected in this set of reports, from the most aseptic, contained and faithful to responsible reporting guidelines, to the most dramatized and prolific in details—perhaps some gratuitous—about the circumstances of the death, the feelings and sufferings of the deceased and the various manifestations of bullying.

Although there are cases in which the identity of the deceased is concealed, in others, it is easy to read the identification details of the schools, the parents, the children themselves, sometimes including their picture, and their place of residence. It is also easy to find in the texts statements from other parents of the pupils, from the surviving parents themselves, from the school environment, from the school management, from administration officials, from the families’ lawyers and even from the juvenile prosecutor’s office.

It is noteworthy that, in several instances, the media has published suicide notes left by minors before taking their own lives, which were likely provided by their legal guardians. Such actions are clear contraventions of most responsible journalism guidelines, which stipulate that direct identification, images of the deceased and suicide notes should not be included in published material, particularly when it involves minors (Everymind, 2020; World Health Organization, 2023; Samaritans, 2020) as it may increase the risk of other minors empathizing with the behavior and potentially imitating it.

However, it is highly likely that in all these cases, the abundance of personal information is facilitated by the parents and relatives of the minors. Driven by a pursuit of justice and a desire for societal acknowledgment, they have chosen to publicly disclose the circumstances of the deaths and the identities of their children. Some families have even transformed their fight against bullying into a public campaign, giving interviews to raise social awareness and demand greater attention from policymakers. In these cases, their children’s tragedies are preserved in collective memory through their names and faces.

This approach to news reporting may conflict with the doctrine of the Constitutional Court, which has opposed the media’s practice of identifying minors in adverse circumstances. In this regard, Judgment 127/2003 of June 30, in its Legal Basis 7, underscores the importance of the right to privacy, stating:

“it is unquestionable that the legitimate interest of minors in not disclosing data relating to their personal or family life is part of the same, which is established, as set out in of the provisions of art. 20.4 EC, as an insurmountable limit to the exercise of the right to freely communicate truthful information.”

(Tribunal Constitucional, 2003)

In Legal Basis 9 of the same decision, it is recalled that “in no way can anyone be required to passively endure the journalistic dissemination of such relevant data about their private life, the knowledge of which is trivial and indifferent to the public interest”.

But at the same time, it is more than questionable whether the circumstances leading up to the suicide of a bullied child are ‘trivial’ or ‘indifferent’ to the community. It is possible that the essence of the complaint—that which defines the alarm or that which indicates that something is not working as it should—lies and is concretized in these details. Ignoring them may end up reducing the public projection of the facts to a mere cliché. In any case, it is debatable whether the dissemination of these suicide notes does more good than harm in terms of increasing the reach and social impact of the possible consequences of entrenched bullying.

Moreover, instances of suicide attempts are also reported in several news articles within the research database. Some reports include individuals’ names, while others, without disclosing personal details of the deceased, provide information about the educational institution where the incident occurred or offer details that could potentially lead to the identification of those involved.

Saray’s suicide attempt: a leap into the void in the face of school bullying and silence.

The parents of the 10-year-old girl who jumped from the balcony in Zaragoza denounce the passivity of her school in the face of bullying. “Neither ‘bullying’ nor ‘bullan’”, said the tutor.

The call surprised Carlos Amezquita on the Mudéjar highway, on his way to Teruel: “Saray has jumped!” his wife shouted. With difficulty, the man managed to understand that his 10-year-old daughter had jumped from the balcony of the house, on a third floor. (…). “It was the worst half hour of my life”, he recounts from the corridor of the Miguel Servet hospital, where Saray is recovering from a fall that could have killed her, but only broke her hip and injured her left ankle.

(El País, 18 September 2022)

Classmates and a teacher prevent a student from committing suicide in class

The acting president of the Community asks parents to remain “calm” and assures that “numerous controls” are being implemented in the high schools

(ABC, 15 April 2019)

A father blames the high school for the suicide attempt of his 14-year-old son, who is being bullied at school

The family found the minor in his room, unconscious and with wounds on his wrists—They claim that the bullying has been continuous since he entered the Mutxamel high school last year

(Información, 14 February 2020)

As a general rule, these news reports of suicide attempts do not usually include photographs of the minors. The ban on the use of these portraits becomes stricter and requires greater caution if they are cases in which there has been a suicide attempt and the minor, as the holder of these rights to privacy, honor and image, has survived. Here the legislation is strict and the case law leaves few loopholes for the use of such images. In this regard, see Judgment 158/2009 of June 25, Legal Basis 4, in which the Constitutional Court reviews the international legal texts that proscribe this practice, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child or the European Charter on the Rights of the Child:

“In short, in order for the capture, reproduction or publication by photograph of the image of a minor in the media to not be considered an illegitimate interference in his or her right to his or her own image (art. 7.5 of Organic Law 1/1982), the prior and express consent of the minor (if he or she is old enough and mature enough to give it), or of his or her parents or legal representatives (art. 3 of Organic Law 1/1982) will be necessary, although even such consent will be ineffective to exclude the violation of the minor’s right to his or her own image if the use of his or her image in the media may imply damage to his or her honor or reputation, or be contrary to his or her interests (art. 4.3 of Organic Law 1/1996).”

(Tribunal Constitucional, 2009)

Furthermore, Judgment 158/2009 of June 29 postulates in Legal Basis 6 that “the social interest or the laudable purpose that the report may have are issues that lack transcendence to consider the non-consensual publication of the photograph of the minor as an attack on his right to his own image”. Accordingly, if a photograph of a minor is published in a news item on suicide and has not been provided or expressly consented to and authorized by his or her legal guardians, it is difficult for the overriding value of freedom of information to prevail in the event of a court case. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court itself goes so far as to question whether the parental authorization waives the obligation to keep the image of these minors private, as can be seen in Judgment 158/2009.

In this regard, among the news about bullying and suicide, the case of Drayke, a 12-year-old boy who died in the United States in 2022, is particularly striking. The way in which digital newspapers in Spain have dealt with this case is unparalleled in other cases that have occurred in Spain. The news reports on this event have been based on publications written by his mother on the social media Instagram. And although some newspapers do not publish the photographs directly, they do provide links or hyperlinks to this social media that lead to images of the child. Particularly shocking among these photographs is one in which the unconscious or deceased child is shown embraced by his mother in the hospital. Here are a couple of examples:

A mother’s heartbreaking message after her son’s suicide due to bullying: “No signs, just hurtful words”.

A family shares their grief on social media after their son was bullied by a classmate for more than a year

“This… this is the result of bullying, my beautiful son was fighting a battle that we have not been able to save him from. It’s real, it’s silent and there is absolutely nothing as a parent you can do. There are no signs, just hurtful words from others who have finally stolen our Drayke from us.” This is the beginning of the heartbreaking message that a mother has posted on social media accompanied by several photos of her entire family with the lifeless body of her son, with the aim of raising awareness among those who read the message. Drayke was only 12 years old, but he could no longer stand the bullying he received in class.

(ABC, 16 February 2022)

A mother’s message after her son’s suicide due to bullying: “How can a 12-year-old boy loved by everyone think that life is so difficult that he needs to get out of it?”

Samie Hardman, a mother from Utah (United States) has shared on her Instagram account some photographs in which she and her family say goodbye to her son Drayke, 12 years old, who has committed suicide due to the bullying he suffered.

(El Mundo, 16 february 2022)

This is a clear example of the differential treatment that some topics receive when the events and their protagonists are located outside Spanish territory. And how, on occasions, the press tends to use foreign cases to deal more forcefully with universal issues, relaxing standards and somehow broadening the way of reporting the news, albeit with controversial results. If the willingness of parents to publish the image of their children is important in some of the examples given above, in this case, it is even more decisive. It is likely that they intended to share this deeply personal moment publicly, believing it to be the most effective means of raising awareness and addressing the issue of bullying that their son allegedly experienced and that other minors may face in the future.

However, the effects on the community around the individuals involved in this event, including schoolmates, teachers and other parents, should also be considered. Additionally, beyond the public interest, it is important to acknowledge the risk of contagion, as highlighted in scientific studies (Pirkis & Nordentoft, 2011), which may be higher in cases where vulnerable individuals may identify with those covered in the media.

Without the family’s initiative, it is unimaginable within the Spanish legal framework that someone would take and publish these images without consent. Here it should be noted the Constitutional Court’s provision in Judgment 231/1988 of 2 December which, although formulated for another case—the controversial dissemination of images of the death of the bullfighter Francisco Rivera Paquirri—provides in its Legal Basis 4:

“certain events that may occur to parents, spouses or children have, normally, and within the cultural patterns of our society, such transcendence for the individual, that their undue publicity or diffusion has a direct impact on the sphere of his own personality. Therefore, there exists in this respect a right—proper and not alien—to privacy, constitutionally protectable.”

(Tribunal Constitucional, 1988)

In this case, it is possible that these are images which, according to the aforementioned ruling, “can be inferred, within the guidelines of our culture, to have a negative impact, causing pain and anguish to the deceased’s close relatives” and that they would directly affect the personal and family privacy of the deceased’s parents. Therefore, it may be challenging to argue that the public interest justifies the publication of such images.

The same judgment recalls that the effects on the health and life of a person can in no case be considered as public, as this would serve, taken to the extreme, to turn the suffering or even the death of a person into an instrument of entertainment, thus violating his dignity. What is shown in this news item is precisely the intimate transition to death of the American minor, that occurs in one of the spheres closest to dignity and individuality. It is that intimate sphere, recognized by the German jurisprudential doctrine, in which aspects of life such as birth, illness, nudity, sexual life or death are grouped and which enjoys the greatest protection in that system and stands up against any interference (Medina Guerrero, 2005, pp. 13–20).

However, despite the fact that bullying-related suicides have a clear social impact and are perhaps the ones that most easily reach the press—partly due to the families’ own interest—neither the majority of bullying situations ends in self-inflicted death nor the majority of suicides of minors has their origin in bullying contexts. Therefore, it can again be stated that the media representation offers a biased view of reality. It is important to note in these cases the pressure from families and the general public to find a culprit, a triggering event, something that explains inexplicable behavior such as a child’s suicide. In this regard, it should be remembered that, as indicated above, the causes of suicide are always complex and multifactorial (Turecki et al., 2019; World Health Organization, 2024). In its guide to responsible reporting, the World Health Organization (2023) specifically advises against journalists simplifying the causes or reducing the reasons for suicidal behavior to a single factor.

Despite this, as Blanco-Castilla and Cano-Galindo (2019) point out, suicide as an extreme and tragic ending has served to bring the phenomenon of bullying into the media spotlight, while also helping to relax the norm of not covering suicides. Thus, one phenomenon has served as an instrument to place the other phenomenon on the media agenda. In the same vein, Rodríguez (2009) highlights the role played by the media as a social warning mechanism against bullying and also as a creator of social awareness and the denunciation of the occasional passivity of the system. These are ideas which, as can be seen, reaffirm the public relevance of this information.

3.4. News on Suicide and Abuse of Minors

Suicides by children and young people for reasons other than those already mentioned are more difficult for newspapers to report, especially when they occur in private spaces. However, the database compiled for this study also includes reports of self-inflicted deaths linked to situations of sexual abuse or harassment that have made it into the public arena. See some examples:

Suicide of another minor in Morocco forced to marry an older man

The 17-year-old girl used a rat poison, just like Amina Filali, forced in 2012 to marry her rapist

(ABC, 28 January 2014)

Prison for a young man for alleged sexual assault related to the suicide of a minor

According to the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon (TSJA), the detainee was apparently the half-brother of the girl who threw herself from the viaduct in Teruel.

(El Periódico de Aragón, 28 June 2019)

A new night of anger in Colombia: Popayán erupts after the suicide of a minor detained by the police

Iván Duque sends his Defense and Interior ministers to that city to quell the riots and clarify the death of the young woman, who took her own life after accusing some agents of sexual abuse

(El País, 15 May 2021)

Jury convicts man of manslaughter for suicide of a minor after sending him 119 harassing messages

The defendant “was aware of the distress he was causing” the 17-year-old boy who killed himself in 2016 but did not let up on his WhatsApp threats. The prosecutor asks for 14 years in prison

(…) According to the jury, in addition to the conviction for homicide, the convicted should have the aggravating circumstance of superiority applied to him, since Paradís knew that the person he was talking to was a minor “and he expressly and specifically took advantage of such a situation, knowing and being aware of the immaturity and vulnerability of the minor.”

(El País, 27 July 2022)

In some of these examples, events ocurring outside Spain take on a universal relevance and are subsequently covered by national newspapers. Their general interest is unquestionable, both because of the situation of abuse that precedes the suicide and because of the extreme vulnerability of the victims, who deserve the greatest protection and response from society. Given their criminal and penal nature, such events are typically regarded as being of public interest.

In this sense, Judgment 52/2002 of February 25, Legal Basis 8, of the Constitutional Court states:

“in general, the existence of newsworthy events in events of criminal relevance, regardless of the status of private subject of the person or persons affected by the news (…). the information on the positive or negative results achieved in their investigations by the State security forces and corps is of public relevance or interest, especially if the crimes committed involve a certain gravity or have caused a considerable impact on public opinion, extending that relevance or interest to any new data or facts that may be discovered, by the most diverse means, in the course of the investigations aimed at clarifying the authorship, causes and circumstances of the criminal act.”

(Tribunal Constitucional, 2002a)

Attention must be drawn to the case of the adolescent who passed away in the Valencia region after being harassed by an adult via WhatsApp. The news article is a judicial chronicle that reports the statements made before the jury and judges during the trial, but it is not exempt from maintaining a strict balance to protect the rights of the minor, even posthumously. The coverage of such a trial would have been even more delicate had the victim of harassment survived the suicide attempt, as the risk of stigmatization would be even greater. It must be considered that a minor’s self-harming behavior in these circumstances could lead to a police investigation for possible criminal conduct, such as sexual harassment, marked by increasing social condemnation. Therefore, publicly identifying the victims in such news coverage may re-victimize them and hinder their recovery if they survived, but it can also burden the lives of their survivors, including parents, siblings and others.

Here it is worth returning once again to Judgment 127/2003 of June 30, which has as its background the rape of a minor. In it, the Constitutional Court ruled on the intrusion into the honor and privacy of this minor who has been identified to society by the data provided by a news item in the press. What is indicated in this Judgment could be applied to a situation where sexual abuse coincides with subsequent self-harming behavior. The Judgment clarifies in its Legal Basis 9:

“there is no doubt that events of criminal relevance should be considered newsworthy events (…) regardless of the private nature of the person affected by the news (…) but such consideration cannot include the individualisation, directly or indirectly, of those who are victims of the events, unless they have allowed or facilitated such general knowledge. Such information is no longer of public interest, as it is unnecessary to transmit the information intended.”

(Tribunal Constitucional, 2003)

3.5. News on Suicide of Minors and Social Media

Another subgroup of news items is linking the suicide of minors with the use of social media and the Internet, as in these examples:

A French victim of cyberbullying tells of her suicide attempt at the Vatican.

(…) Laetitia Chanut, was 17 years old and was very popular both at her school in Albi and among the 400 friends on her Facebook page when, suddenly, as she recounted “I discovered that someone had created a dozen accounts just like mine: same photo, same name, same appearance… And I had written to all my friends to ask: ‘Hello, have you seen my porn video?’ A video that evidently does not exist!”.

(ABC, 9 December 2024)

Minors commit suicide if they are impersonated online

Young people attach so much importance to their “digital identity” that they confuse it with their real identity

(La Razón, 8 May 2015)

14-year-old girl commits suicide live on air and her mother mocks her

Nakia Venant was in foster care when she hanged herself with a scarf before the eyes of hundreds of onlookers, including her parent, on 22 January 2016

(El Periódico, 16 March 2017)

A mother in the United States discovers suicide advice for children hidden in YouTube Kids videos

The woman alerted about the content on her blog and got YouTube to remove it

(La Vanguardia, 25 February 2019)

Police prevent the suicide of a minor who posted her intentions on TikTok

The National Police have prevented the suicide of a minor who had published her intentions on the social media TikTok and who at the time of being located in a town near Benidorm (Alicante) had cut marks on both wrists.

(La Vanguardia, 30 December 2020)

It also seems logical that there is a public interest in making known the negative consequences—in this case, extreme—that the use of the virtual world, capable of hosting the best but also the worst of the real world, can have on the youngest members of society.

In reporting this type of news, there may be a tendency to use not only photographs, but also videos and personal information that minors themselves have shared on social media platforms—such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram—especially when privacy settings are poorly defined or insufficiently restricted, making the content accessible. Regarding the use of material from social media networks without the explicit permission of the account owners, the Constitutional Court has addressed this issue comprehensively in Judgment 27/2020 of February 24, Legal Basis 3. The judgment acknowledges the risk that individuals may lose control over their privacy, image and honor when interacting on social media platforms and that the rights safeguarding these legal interests may become blurred (Tribunal Constitucional, 2020). Nevertheless, despite this apparent erosion of privacy boundaries within the social media environment, the Court emphasizes:

“with certain exceptions, even if citizens voluntarily share personal data on the Internet, they continue to have their own private sphere, which must remain separate from the millions of users of social media on the Internet, unless they have given their unequivocal consent to be observed or to have their image used and published.”

The Court does not mean by this that any use by the media of photos or videos uploaded to these networks and open to viewing by all users of the network is tainted by a lack of legitimacy. But that “interference in the fundamental right to one’s own image must necessarily be justified by the overriding public interest in having access to it and in disseminating it”. This last clarification once again opens the door to a use of this material by journalists that is truly justified in the public interest in information. It is interesting to consider what the scope of the news would have been if these elements, which come from social media, had been omitted.

However, social media are also often a source of multiple data relating to minors, which can range from tastes, activities, preferences and even comments posted by themselves about their state of mind or about conflicts or problems that they have publicly expressed on dates close to their self-injury. It is contextual information that can legitimately serve the journalist to obtain a broader understanding of the circumstances surrounding the suicide, regardless of whether this material is included or left out of the texts finally published.

Among the suicide news linked to social media, some can be highlighted that speak of deaths related to “viral challenges”:

The dangerous ‘Blue Whale’ arrives in Spain: a minor is admitted to a psychiatric hospital

The 15-year-old girl followed the 50 challenges of the game that invites people to commit suicide. The ‘Blue Whale’ has arrived in Spain. It is a role-play game in which, through fifty tests, those who participate in it must follow challenges that end with suicide. A Catalan minor has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for participating in it.

(Ideal, 28 April 2017)

“I love you but I have to follow the man in the hood”: the suicide of a child that shocks Italy

The minor left a note and jumped from the balcony of his room, on the 11th floor of a building in Naples

The Jonathan Galindo challenge uses a sinister image that went viral 10 years ago but serves as a lure for younger victims

(La Razón, 30 September 2020)

Alert in Valencia after the suicide of a minor and the attempt of another in just 12 h

The National Police investigates if there is any connection between the two boys and if their action is related to some virtual challenge

(Levante, 9 February 2021)

The social concern generated by these “viral challenges” is significant, even though suicide remains an extreme or rare consequence. But, as stated in Judgment 20/1992 of February 14, Legal Basis 3, only community relevance “and not the simple satisfaction of the curiosity of others, often misdirected and unduly encouraged, is the only thing that can justify the requirement that those disturbances or annoyances caused by the dissemination of a certain news item be assumed” (Tribunal Constitucional, 1992).

This exclusion of curiosity as a legitimizing force for journalistic activity also appears in Judgment 115/2000 of May 5, in which Legal Basis 9 indicates that public relevance is present “if we are faced with facts or circumstances that are likely to affect citizens as a whole, which has an unquestionable constitutional value, and is different from the simple satisfaction of human curiosity in the lives of others” (Tribunal Constitucional, 2000).

In this regard, while the multifactorial and multicausal nature of suicide cannot be overlooked, when it occurs at such an early age and is preceded by any form of abuse, it is undeniable that this becomes a matter of significant societal concern, given the potential for it to affect any minor in any environment.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

The aim of this study was to determine whether the news items dealing with suicide in children and adolescents, both in general and in specific cases, fit into the classification of public interest that the Spanish Constitutional Court has been constructing for decades and which does not always coincide with the public interest from a journalistic point of view. To this end, news items published in digital newspapers in Spain for almost a decade, divided into different thematic subgroups, have been analyzed under the magnifying glass of the public interest doctrine extracted from the jurisprudence of this Court.

News covering suicides among minors in Spain was hardly present just a decade ago, but its number has been increasing in the period investigated between 2013 and 2022, either episodically or with a global approach. It is one of the subtypes of suicide news that generates more friction with other legal goods, since the protection of children and adolescents stands as an express limit set by the Constitution. It is, moreover, a particularly sensitive topic due to the possibility of incitement to suicidal behavior by imitation in other peers in vulnerable situations.

But whether it refers to the causes mentioned in this article or whether it warns about the generalized deterioration of mental health in young people, its publication is a wake-up call to public managers and political authorities. In fact, its appearance in the press has necessarily brought this debate into the public eye. This is especially true after the pandemic, when alerts by organizations created to protect minors as well as by mental health professionals on the increase in these behaviors in adolescents have made it more evident that this problem has a place in the pages of the newspapers and also in the public opinion.

The protection and welfare of children and adolescents is a primary concern for society and is a core constitutional principle that influences the entire legal system. This is evidenced by the extensive number of specific and transversal legal provisions dedicated to this issue. Although it is a minority behavior, suicide ranks among the top two causes of non-natural death for individuals aged 15 to 19 in Spain. The fact that a young person chooses to end their life prematurely represents a profound disruption in the natural course of life, making it imperative that suicidal behavior in minors be regarded as a matter of public interest.

The relevance of these news items is, therefore, beyond question when the press deals in a generic way with aggregate data on attempts, deaths or possible causes without going into particular cases. But a detailed case-by-case study is essential when it comes to reports or news that focus on the suicide of a specific, individualized and, frequently, identified minor. Newspapers may report statistics on childhood cancer deaths, but they do not usually report individual stories of individual children dying of cancer. Similarly, individual suicides do not transcend the private sphere unless they occur in a public space—even a virtual one such as the Internet—or are preceded by situations of sexual abuse, bullying or the harmful use of social media because these circumstances alone create social alarm. Suicide here, therefore, becomes an extreme symptom of other open seams in the social fabric that journalists have a duty to report and condemn.

It is precisely in the news of suicides occurring in contexts of school bullying that the greatest friction with the rights of the people who make up the school and family environment can arise. This is possibly the most affected, complex and sensitive social circle of all possible after a self-induced death, probably in a position of extreme vulnerability. These are situations in which journalists must be very aware of the risk of the contagion of suicidal behavior, but also of the privacy, honor and self-image of minors and their families. It cannot be ignored that these family members and relatives are likely to be in a state of shock, with a reduced capacity to calmly weigh the consequences of publicizing certain aspects of the facts, and probably unable to anticipate the irreversible consequences of such publicity. In short, reporting on suicides related to bullying leads the journalist down a thorny path, fraught with potential clashes with very personal rights as opposed to information of undoubted public interest. Its coverage is often handled in different ways, sometimes more faithful to ethical and legal correctness or to the canons of responsible reporting and, at other times, in a less sensitive and delicate manner.

On the other hand, the Constitutional Court is directly opposed to the individualization of minors in adverse situations and the dissemination of their images. Even so, it is understandable that transgressions are frequent in these news items due to the very desire for publicity of the parents and family, who sacrifice their grief and privacy by understanding that the dissemination of their case will serve to bring attention and justice to them. Therefore, when they are undertaken as personalized reports, news about suicides poses a great dilemma. On the one hand, there is the irruption into the fragile terrain of the most personal rights within the doubly protected sphere of childhood and adolescence. On the other hand, there is the convenience of reporting on deaths which, even if we understand that in suicide we should not look for hasty cause–effect connections, have as a background a psychological suffering that is difficult to bear, in a scenario of continued harassment and without relief, as some of these minors express in their farewell letters.

But it is also necessary to carry out an abstraction exercise of imagining what impact and what interpellative force this news would have on society and on those who hold power if these reports were stripped of all those details, such as photos, personal names and suicide notes, which help the reading public to empathize more intensely with the position of these victims and their parents. It is likely that the reach of the news on public opinion would not be the same and its social function would also be diminished. Public interest in suicide in these cases is defensible because it acts as an extreme manifestation and gateway to another underlying problem, that of bullying. The debate, therefore, lies in the nuances and the different ways in which this journalistic task can be channeled, rather than in the fact that the issue is tackled without avoiding it.

Given the public interest in suicide in childhood and adolescence, it is desirable that the press try to reconcile the interest of the minor, both individually and collectively, with that social responsibility that it cannot turn its back on in order to form public opinion, raise awareness and pressure public authorities to find solutions to a matter as worrying as this. It is worth asking what the best way is to serve the public interest while preserving as much as possible the dignity of the people involved or how to minimize harm to their environment while effectively denouncing harassment, sexual abuse, threats on social media or the need for greater attention to the mental health of the very young, to reveal what is going wrong and where the social pattern is breaking down.

This coverage is relevant because the community—local, regional and national—wants to know the reasons for the suicidal behavior of its youngest members, however few they may be, and to put pressure on the authorities to take measures to control and prevent the risk factors affecting this population group. How this is put into practice is very important and it is not possible to establish a priori closed rules in the face of the varied situations that reality may present. Nor can the impact of these readings on other minors in vulnerable situations and the risk of dragging them into the repetition of behaviors be overlooked. In this regard, it is worth remembering that the protection afforded to minors by the Constitution is both in their capacity as objects of information and as recipients of this right to information.

However, even if this friction between freedom of information and its limits does not occur in a way that has to be settled in the courts, it can be said that these references are good guidelines to achieve a more legitimate fit in the legal traffic of freedom of information when a journalist uses it to publish about suicide, especially if the protagonists are minors. Keeping these limits in mind as an apriorism when covering and writing a news item on the self-inflicted death of a child or adolescent can help to ethically and deontologically improve the quality of such information, so they should be a constant horizon, whether suicide is addressed as the main subject or whether it appears as an incidental or collateral matter. Keeping this non-hierarchical architecture of rights in mind is a way of anticipating how far it is lawful to go and how far it is not in the service of the public interest.