Report the truth, no matter how ugly
Matt Dobek committed suicide.
Those were four words that the Detroit media establishment would not print for a week.
Dobek, a CMU alumnus and 2009 inductee of the CMU Journalism Hall of Fame, was found dead Aug. 21 after hanging himself at age 51.
Yet, if you only relied on media reports, you would have had no clue that Dobek took his own life.
The Detroit Free Press made no mention of why he died and the Detroit News used the phrase “he died unexpectedly” in their initial reports on the night of his death.
In the coming days following his death, there were no other news reports from the Detroit media and the story of Dobek’s death was mostly forgotten.
Stories have since surfaced that Dobek was incredibly depressed after being fired from his job as vice president of public relations for the Detroit Pistons in April after spending 29 years with the organization.
This is a detail that, when discovered, should be reported, and would be in the case of any high-profile death.
Dobek’s job with the Pistons consisted of acting as a liaison between the media and the team, which led to him developing personal relationships with members of the media.
Be that as it may, the media should not give Dobek special treatment in the reporting of his death.
The news industry is not about sparing feelings or making people feel better, it’s about reporting facts. The fact was that Matt Dobek hanged himself.
Notwithstanding the ethical violations by the Detroit media, the story again cements the belief that a serious disease such as depression is something that its sufferers should be ashamed of and that it should not be publicly discussed.
Instead of using a tragedy to create some form of good or even to bring in a new audience to the dialogue on depression, the Detroit media decided that the truth hurt too much and just hoped for a while that nobody would notice.
Nobody really ever knows why anyone, including Matt Dobek, commits suicide.
But I do know that Matt Dobek deserved better in death.
