Why can't we have more of this in the media?

We really like the i newspaper. For one thing it doesn't cost an arm and a leg (20p weekdays, 30p Saturdays); for another it doesn't weigh a ton or represent a small forest, just a small tabloid format; for a third, its editorial approach is "independent"; for a fourth, it has a good page of puzzles, like crosswords, sodukos, codewords to keep our minds active. I don't think it makes a profit for its owner. It deserves to, and deserves to be better known. After all, the other newspapers from The Times downwards are increasingly full of rubbish.

Anyway, on Saturday, Jane pointed out a major article to me:

Bram Harrison, with i journalist Nina Lakhani (Independent photo)

Locked in but still lost in music: UK's bravest DJ. It's about Bram Harrison, a chap who had a mountain bike accident 14 years ago, suffering a severe head injury which left him "locked in", able only to communicate by eye-movement. He is known as DJ Eye Tech on his own radio show, Eye Life Radio. Here's part of the article: "Several years ago a doctor asked him what they should do if, for whatever reason, his heart stopped. In other words, would he want to be resuscitated or should they let him die? He looked up immediately. He wanted to live then, just as he wants to live now.

His desire for a long, healthy, meaningful life may strike some as surprising. Another man with locked-in syndrome, Tony Nicklinson, 57 – stricken since a 2005 stroke – has made headlines in recent weeks as he took his fight for the right to die to the High Court.

Nicklinson's plight has attracted a lot of empathy as many people assume they would feel the same way: that a locked-in life is not worth living.

This makes Harrison angry. 'In the early days two nurses that I overheard talking said that I would not last long and that I would kill myself, but I knew that would never happen.'

In an email a few days before we meet, Harrison said: 'I've definitely not got the same view as Tony Nicklinson. I don't want people to think that locked-in syndrome is unbearable. I enjoy my rather limited life.'" The article ends: "There have been many low points but he has never felt hopeless. 'I don't want my relatives to see Tony Nicklinson and think that's how I feel,' he says."

The article is worth reading, because it isn't the picture projected by most of the media. About a year ago, BBC's Radio 5 broadcast the whole of the Victoria Derbyshire programme from Tony Nicklinson's home. And the Beeb have been back several times since, including with me. No one would want to be in his situation and I don't in the least blame him for his desire to die. Admittedly he's gone to the High Court since then to ask if someone can be allowed to end his life without it being murder. But that wasn't in the news a year ago.

My question is where was, and is, the national coverage of Michelle Wheatley, the young mum whom I mentioned in I Choose Everything, and Gary Parkinson, who scouts for Middlesborough FC, and now Bram Harrison, all of whom have locked-in syndrome and want to live. I don't have the resources of the BBC, but I've come across them and written about them. Why do we not hear from the national broadcaster about them? As a friend of mine commented, "Hope other news sources run this too - to prove they're not biased!" I don't think they have - as yet. I've found three positives to one negative. Even the worst of disabilities can be, and is, lived positively. So I say, good for The i! And for goodness' sake prove your independence, BBC! Let's hear about them. Let's see them.

Here we go again, Aunty

Summer must be a-coming in. The season of media-created news. Last night I saw a trailer for the BBC's latest salvo in their campaign for the legalisation of euthanasia, fronted by millionaire author Terry Pratchett, about people wanting to decide when to die. We've already been told that it will include a scene in which a man with Motor Neurone Disease is assisted in committing suicide at - yes, you've guessed it - the European euthanasia capital, Zurich's Dignitas facility. This is appears in direct contravention of the World Health Organisation's guidelines about media portrayal of suicide: "Don’t publish photographs or suicide notes. Don’t report specific details of the method used. Don’t give simplistic reasons. Don’t glorify or sensationalize suicide."   


There's an excellent comment in the Christian Medical Comment on the subject, which I do urge you to read. Peter Saunders asks questions which really do need answering, about the impartiality of the BBC on this issue. To balance the repeated programmes advocating and sympathetic to assisted suicide, where are the equivalent about hospice and palliative care? Where are the programmes about the people with terminal conditions who have chosen to live rather than take their lives? Where are the programmes about Matt Hampson, Alison Davies, Kate Allatt, Katherine Araniello? Where are the programmes about disabled people's fears about the consequences of legalisation? Where was the feature about Scope's survey - see my post - ?  


What do we do about the broadcasting medium which we fund through the licence fee - when it doesn't follow even its own guidelines? What does "public interest" mean? Does it mean titillating the public's interest-buds as the tabloids argue? Or does it mean acting in the public's best interests?


However, let me acknowledge a good public interest programme on Radio 5 Live last night: Depression in cricket. It includes Marcus Trescothick talking about his depression, and Matthew Hoggard - and Kevin Saxelby talking about his brother, Mark, who committed suicide. A thoughtful programme.