The Restructuring of Headline

By Kate Morgan on Thursday, September 7th, 2017 in News.

 

Headline has been monitoring mental health and suicide reporting in the media since its inception in 2006.  Headline’s work has primarily been concerned with the monitoring of all print media to identify best practice and adherence to media guidelines.  Highlighting and working with media organisations in breach of the guidelines has also formed part of the work completed by Headline.   Engaging with both journalists working in industry and those training in Universities and Colleges in an educational role also forms part of Headline’s role in mental health and suicide reporting.

The National Office of Suicide Prevention appointed Dr. Roddy Flynn to evaluate the operations of Headline.  The initial draft report evaluating Headline’s performance of its media monitoring, media response and media education functions was completed in June 2017.  The report concluded that the media monitoring function performed by Headline was disproportionate to the value of the information produced as the percentage of negative media reporting is very low.  The report concluded that periodic thematic content analysis of the data would be more beneficial and would allow a more proactive educational focus to the work undertaken by Headline.

Following on from the findings of the evaluation, Headline is currently in a restructuring phase as it transitions from a predominately media monitoring functional unit to a proactive educational and consultancy focused role in mental health and suicide media reporting.  The new restructured Headline will be launched in January 2018.