Suicide video is indecent, disgusting
What is up with people? I mean, have we completely lost our sense of compassion and decency?
Perhaps that’s an odd question coming from a person who works for American media, an entity that’s usually and conveniently blamed for everything wrong in the world, but hear me out for a minute here.
Thursday evening, I came across Josh Levy as he sat precariously perched on the outside of the Monroe Street Bridge. At that time, he’d been there for a bit more than four hours. Friday afternoon, Levy jumped off the bridge and died.
Tuesday morning, I found a video re-enactment of Levy’s suicide online.
Yes, I went looking for pictures.
Why? Because I saw onlookers with cell phones snapping away Thursday night and I wondered what would happen to those snapshots.
No, I’m not going to give you the Web link to the video I found.
It’s a short, home-style video that begins with pictures of Levy crouched on the side of the Monroe Street Bridge, and ends with a re-enacted walk out on the bridge and a “fall” to the rocks at the dry river bottom below – complete with fake sound effects.
That is just disgusting.
There is absolutely no reason for producing a piece like that and putting it online, other than morbid obsession with someone else’s tragedy and a desperate thirst for five clicks of Internet fame.
When I came across Levy (whose name no one knew at the time) on Thursday evening I stuck around for a while hoping he would come to his senses and climb back onto the bridge.
I watched as a police officer gave him a bottle of water.
Yet as I stood there by the banister west of City Hall, I ended up paying more attention to what was going on with the crowd than to what was happening on the bridge.
Behind me, traffic was backed up for blocks with drivers yelling, “What’s going on?”
That I can understand – a main arterial was closed, drivers wanted to know which way to go and why.
To my left, onlookers were occasionally yelling, “jump” or “get on with it.”
That I can’t understand. Not only is it breaking the law, but it’s also totally moronic.
Other people in the crowd added theatrical flair as they pretended to fall off the low banister where I stood, yelling stuff like, “uh – look at me – I’m falling” down onto the bark-covered flowerbed, three or four feet below.
Eventually, the group to my left went on to wherever they were going because as one person said, “nothing is happening.”
Personally, I thought plenty was happening for a weekday evening in Spokane.
Now, mainstream media like this newspaper and most local TV stations as a rule do not report on suicides unless they occur in a very public fashion, because some say such news reports may lead to more suicides.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on in newsrooms about situations like this one, weighing our obligation to inform the community about what’s going on against chances of our reports hurting anyone else.
Clearly, not everyone shares those concerns. Thankfully, we live in a free country where anyone can report pretty much anything they’d like to, and publishing today is easier than it’s ever been – all you need is an Internet connection.
Yes, I did contact the producer(s) of the video, but could only do so via e-mail. They didn’t respond to me asking why they chose to do a re-enactment.
No, I’m not going to advocate for censorship or a “crackdown on cyberspace” or anything like that, but I am going to appeal for just a tad of common decency.
It’s not OK to turn every tragedy into your own personal film noir project, just because you have a video camera.