It was with great relief that I read Clarence Tsui's article, 'Media blamed for copycat child suicides', (South China Morning Post, January 18).
Having lived in Hong Kong for the past five years, I have witnessed the spate of suicides of schoolchildren since 1991.
As a former police reporter for a large newspaper in the United States, I have always grimaced when viewing a report on the evening news or in the morning newspapers (English and Chinese alike) about the latest suicide victim.
In the United States, most journalists abide by the following standard when faced with this ethical dilemma of whether to publish or not.
The standard prescribes that suicides by public figures are newsworthy and publishable; non-public persons, and particularly children, unless involving a highly unusual circumstance (a mass suicide, for instance) do not warrant any media coverage whatsoever.
The American standard is not based on a causation theory.