Suicide reporting in a changing media landscape: perspectives from Nepali media professionals

Responsible media reporting of suicide is an evidence-based population-level suicide prevention intervention. To devise programs to engage with the media, it is imperative to understand the experiences and perspectives of media professionals. Suicides are highly newsworthy in Nepal and deeply shaped by socio-cultural factors such as gender roles, caste, and ethnicity. Yet little is known about media professionals’ practices and experiences in reporting on suicide. This study examines Nepali media professionals’ perspectives and experiences of suicide reporting, and the contextual forces shaping their work. In 2025, semi-structured qualitative interviews with 22 diverse media professionals with experience reporting on suicide-related news were undertaken across different regions in Nepal. Semi-structured interviews explored why suicide incidents are reported, how suicide news is sourced and produced, and perceived challenges and responsibilities in reporting. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and translated, and analysed using a thematic approach that combined deductive and inductive coding. Commercial pressures, audience demands, and socio-cultural factors were seen to drive decisions about which suicides become news (e.g. female suicides), how they are framed, and whose deaths are overlooked. While not allocated to one beat, suicides were often treated as crime news, with brief and graphic reports. A demand-supply logic was used to explain the high level of coverage of suicide news, with a high degree of audience interest in these stories. Participants described how organisational pressures, changing media environments, and sociocultural factors such as gender norms, stigma, and cultural narratives shaped suicide reporting. Our findings shed light on how media professionals in Nepal understand and enact suicide reporting in a rapidly changing environment. By foregrounding media professionals’ own accounts of news values, routines and constraints, this study provides a contextual foundation for future work on media, suicide and public communication in Nepal.