All in the family: Media presentations of family assisted suicide in Britain

Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, Albert Banerjee and Steve Taylor

Social Science & Medicine, 2006, vol. 63, issue 8, 2153-2164

Abstract: This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the press coverage of family assisted suicide in Britain during the mid to late 1990s. The newspaper articles we examine focus on court cases in which a family member had been charged with assisting a terminally ill relative to put an end to their lives. The paper aims to typify basic characteristics of the coverage and to explore their potential political implications. The observations reveal a consistently supportive stance towards family assisted suicide that is produced by depictions of dying persons and perpetrators as autonomous and conscientious individuals; by idyllic portrayals of family relations; and by praising judges for their lenient verdicts. Presentations of the law as a dated State system, as well as the marginalization of opposing voices, further enhanced the supportive message. We suggest that the commending of actors' self-reliance and the call for decreased State interference in personal affairs aligns with the neo-liberal spirit that has come into prominence in Britain since the 1980s. Within this context, we raise some questions regarding the broader political significance of such media representations.

Keywords: Euthanasia; Family; assisted; suicide; Neo-liberalism; Media; UK; State (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(06)00256-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:63:y:2006:i:8:p:2153-2164

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().