'Rules broken' in suicide reports

Media coverage of a spate of suicides is "exploiting" desperate young people and encouraging copycats, an MP said today.

Madeleine Moon hit out at the description of her Bridgend constituency as a "death town" and said she would report alleged breaches of journalistic guidelines to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

On Monday Angeline Fuller, a former pupil of Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology, was the latest to be found dead in the county. She was found hanging at a house in Nantymoel, Bridgend, South Wales.

South Wales Police said they were not linking her death to those of 13 other young people in the area, and have played down links between the other suspected suicides.

Seven of the young people found hanging are believed to have used social networking site Bebo.

The PCC's code of practice was tightened in 2006, after appeals from help groups such as The Samaritans, and now tells editors to "avoid excessive detail about the method used" in reporting suicides.

But Ms Moon said that was being breached. "Absolutely everything I've seen from the description of Bridgend as a 'death town', 'suicide town', talking about suicide 'cults' is absolutely disgraceful and has created additional risk for young people," she said.

"I've got no problem with the media reporting something. What I have is a problem with the breaching of all the guidelines."

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said he found her claims "hard to accept". "It would be ridiculous not to say what the cause of death was," he said. There have been no complaints to the PCC as yet, he pointed out.