A news story and its management, such as the suicide of two 17-year-old girls in Heliopolis, require that we as a society as a whole measure ourselves by our boots.

First and foremost, the political parties and the MMEs. And if the mental vulnerability of adolescents and suicidality are issues that call for parents, children and the school community to engage in popular psychological support sessions, the problem returns to the state and its institutions.

Populism hurts

When often in the name of opposition for the opposition, human stories are interspersed with denunciatory party quotes, when human suffering is instrumentalized in an untruthful way, when movements and pseudo-movements permanently pursue angry and outraged young people, any issues and gaps in government policy are not addressed. The only result is toxicity poisoning the society and sickening the souls of children and teenagers.

It is at that point that the sensitive antennae of the youths realize that democracy and sense of justice are weakening and growing older every day. It is at that point when they realize that in a society of extreme competition and sterile communicative denunciation, with the motto “winner takes all, they find no room to grow up and grow old.

They see, for example, images of MPs and political leaders exchanging insults and engaging in below-the-belt beatings. Sometimes they will laugh, sometimes they will troll, sometimes they will feel sadness… In education they experience a harsh examination system.

They only learn to either abstain or raise a fist, and they have never seen the parties sit at the same table to discuss and decide policies for young people, schools and families. What the government does for the opposition is damaging and, most recently, immoral.

Character assassination, the popular tool of political communication by opposition figures, may be aimed at the political opponent, but – as in any war – the first victims are civilians. And among them, even more exposed, are children, who have no responsibility for this life we are bequeathing to them as an adult society.

Empowered politicians, even with a highly emotional and sentimental charge, are not shaping a vision and inspiring teenagers to build a better future when they trumpet a 17-year-old girl’s message to her family just before she jumps into the void.

Why did Maria Karustianou need to publish a girl’s personal letter on FB and structure her… own manifesto for political change on top of it? What did reproduction serve, if not the hunger of electoral hunger?

Why did the anguish of a mother who lost her child and the spontaneous anguish and fear for all children need the letter to be articulated? Was it for reasons of narrative sophistication and to enhance the charged emotional context that would stimulate public anger?

Whatever answers are given – if given – are not certain to have any substantive value. For as long as politicians play the game with the same marked deck of cards, all they achieve is to make the face-personality of life even more repulsive to the teenager and to take his breath away.

Effective journalism

The charade of ruthless and bloodthirsty management of such a tragedy is dragging a portion of the media and social media, and the fact that the content of the seventeen-year-old’s note is being released publicly is problematic in itself.

On TV, video of the plunge deaths of two children, with the eyewitness describing it and the government spokesman, Pavlos Marinakis, calling for intervention of the Judiciary and the National Broadcasting Council, withdrawal of the controversial video and stopping its reproduction.

In a statement, the Greek Union of Journalists reminds the strict adherence to the rules of journalistic ethics, while the “Smile of the Child” also makes a public appeal for non-reproduction of details and personal notes concerning the two 17-year-old girls.

However, under the post of the recommendation, another passionate debate began.One side agreed, the other disagreed… Except that opinion in any public debate on this ought to be given by experts and scientists. The rest of us should confine ourselves to the coffee shop or… the living room of our homes.

The media should follow rules of ethics, avoiding details about the method or place of suicide to avoid “suicide contagion”, a phenomenon that is also of concern to the World Health Organization.

Note that from 2022 to date, 10 children, aged 12-14 years, and 37 children, aged 15-19 years, have committed suicide. Let politicians and media representatives study these figures and redefine their roles and attitudes. And then let them speak out. With action.