The New York Times, whose approach to journalism is closely monitored by other media, has lately run quite a few articles in the main news section that sprawl across two or more pages, the sort of long-form, off-the-news features we expect in magazines, including the Times’s own magazine.
The paper’s December 8 Sunday edition included a mold-breaking innovation in this trend, a “special report” tabloid insert that ran no less than 44 pages. Headlined “The End,” it reported on the life and doctor-assisted suicide of Belgium’s Marieke Vervoort, a wheelchair-bound star athlete.
How the media treat such a contentious and emotion-laden ethical issue as euthanasia carries great cultural significance. Coverage will captivate most readers because anguish of families and friends over physical and emotional sufferings or end-of-life decisions is almost universal, though usually in less public and dramatic fashion.
The story in brief: Afflicted by a rare neuromuscular disease, Vervoort was wheelchair-bound by age 20, amid debilitating pain that robbed her of sleep. She turned to sports for some relief. Remarkably, she beat the reigning champion to win a sprinting gold medal at the 2012 Paralympic Games, becoming a nationwide celebrity, and won silver and bronze at the 2016 games,
Meanwhile, Belgium had passed one of the world’s most liberal programs for doctor-assisted suicide in 2002. Till then, Vervoort had never thought of killing herself. But after conferring with physician Wim Distelmans, Belgium’s leading euthanasia advocate, she filed paperwork to end her life when she wished, but delayed as her athletic career thrived.
When she retired in 2016 and became a public euthanasia spokeswoman, Times European sports correspondent Andrew Keh closely tracked her situation for the article. On October 22, Distelmans injected lethal poison that took Vervoort's life at age 40.
Journalism 101 classes denounce the New York Daily News’s infamous page one photo of a woman being executed in an electric chair under the bold headline “DEAD!”
That was back in 1928.
There was no such public or journalistic uproar in 2019 over the Times’s two-page display of Lynsey Addario’s photo that showed Distelmans killing Vervoort, though unlike in 1928 she assented to this.
Despite the opportunity offered by 44 pages we never learned in any detail why Vervoort’s parents “were philosophically uncomfortable” with her decision for death. Nor were we told what her sister believes.
In other words, there was the usual religious neglect.
Readers might ask whether this family was totally divorced from church influences and how this shaped matters. And there were other important omissions, as well.
The insert’s lavish white space also meant there was ample room for a non-partisan sidebar reviewing the secular and religious arguments, con as well as pro, in this longstanding debate, perhaps written by the paper’s talented but underused religion writer Elizabeth Dias. Another helpful sidebar could have summarized the state of the laws in the 50 states and the particulars with the nations that permit mercy-killing.
Vervoort had been a motivational speaker on living with severe physical challenges. This aspect especially troubled Taylor Hyatt, writing online for Tonjours Vivant (Not Dead Yet), Canada’s advocate for the disabled, chronically ill and aged. He worried that because Vervoort made suicide a public matter and sought to influence such decisions by others, “young fans could be motivated to follow in her footsteps.”
Hyatt raised other concerns. Did she receive appropriate palliative care to counteract her pain? Did she have a peer counselor’s support as she grappled with the drastic change of retirement and worsening condition? If Vervoort was “immersed in pro-suicide messages,” did anyone match this with “encouragement to live”?
Since such vital questions in mercy-killing cases were left unanswered and commonly raised cautions left unmentioned, the lavish Times coverage was both a breakthrough and a journalistic failure in terms of basic public information.
Sources: The BBC posts pro-euthanasia material here. This anti site links to vast resources on the controversy including 100-plus articles just on Belgium.