… or do we need to call a spade a spade?

The bitter and twisted old ex-journo hacks who compile the Media Glass House are not sure when it became a thing not to mention the words “suicide” or “took their own life” when reporting on sudden deaths of people, famous or otherwise.

One of our writers thinks it was around the time in the early 1980s when he used to enjoy a lazy couple of Fourex stubbies at the beer truck at the back of Queensland Newspapers. And he’s not talking that Gold rubbish; he’s downing full strength Fourex at 4.9 per cent so the memory of these things is understandably hazy.

The general theory back then was that research had shown that reporting factually that someone had committed suicide would prompt copycaters to take their own lives.

And it’s been pretty much a policy observed fairly rigidly until the very sad death of NRL star player and successful coach Paul Green on Thursday.

Green had apparently died of a heart attack at 49, the early news reports declared, and that was sad enough news, seeing a wonderful life cut short that way and a loving wife and young kids left behind.

But then along came ABC news online on Friday where “took his own life” was used, making Green’s death so much sadder in so many ways.

By Friday night’s ABC 7pm bulletin out of Brisbane, newsreader Louisa Rebgets called a spade a spade in her introduction. “The 49-year-old took his own life yesterday,” she stated, as “calls grow for the NRL to pay more attention to mental health” issues for its players.

Reporter Toby Jurss-Lewis was equally as blunt: “The 49-year-old died by suicide on Thursday”.

Now compare that approach to Danny Weidler’s column in today’s Sun-Herald. Weidler goes to extraordinary lengths not to use “suicide” or “took his own life” even though the whole thrust of his article is that Green did exactly that. Weidler paints a picture of a man who felt his beloved game had left him behind.

The writer talks of Green’s death. The fact that he has died.

So who is doing the right thing here?

The aforementioned Bug hack who was a much-admired Courier-Mail staffer back in the day admits he never saw much sense in the theory that lives could be saved by not using trigger words such as suicide.

Especially as, in the decades that have rolled past since, such stories have invariably added Lifeline and other mental help hotline numbers at the end of such reports, making it abundantly clear what has happened. Indeed, could a klaxon get the message across any clearer?

Our bitter hack asks a very simple question: people – be they seriously depressed or for some bizarre reason of sound enough mind but who just want to ape their heroes – won’t take their lives if they thought Paul Green died of a heart attack but very well might once they see all those help-line numbers at the end of all those reports of his passing?

This has never made much sense to our inhouse hack ex-sub but to be fair, after some decades of drinking Fourex heavy, there’s not a lot that makes sense to him nowadays.