Stephen Glover on The Press

What are we to make of the outcry against the media for their reporting of a perplexing spate of suicides among young people in South Wales?

Some say that the media are making things worse – if they did not actually create the problem. According to Madeleine Moon, the local Labour MP, media coverage is exploiting desperate young people and encouraging copycats. At least one parent has blamed the media for the suicide of their child. The Children's Commissioner for Wales has written to some newspapers asking them to limit their reporting of the suicides.

Meanwhile, local police and the local coroner play down the existence of a suicide pact or suicide internet links that might explain why 17 young people should have killed themselves in or around Bridgend since the beginning of last year. The authorities point out that the suicide rate for Bridgend between 1996 and 2006 was at least twice as high as the average for Wales, which was itself higher than that for the United Kingdom.

Last week, Oxford University's department of psychiatry said that there is "compelling evidence of increases in suicidal behaviour after the appearance of news reports, fictional drama presentations on television, and suicide manuals". Other research has been quoted that suggests that a 1988 German drama series showing the suicide of a 19-year-old man had a dramatic short-term effect on the suicide rate.

Have the media been irresponsible to the point of culpability in their reporting of the Bridgend suicides? Before we convict them, it is worth pointing out that most of these suicides took place before the national media started writing about them. A month ago, the Daily Mail reported that there had been seven suicides in Bridgend in the preceding year. Within a few days, that figure was adjusted to 13. So there have been four suicides since the national media first noticed the phenomenon.

Whether any of these can be blamed on the media is impossible to prove. The rate has risen somewhat since the story went national, but the numbers are too small to have any statistical significance. My suspicion is that young people in Bridgend were as aware of the suicides before the national media took an interest as subsequently. They probably depend more for information on their social networks, many internet-based, than on "traditional" media such as newspapers and television.

There has to be a very good reason for not reporting an event. Whether or not the police are right to rule out internet suicide pacts, there is no denying that the recent rate of suicides among young people in Bridgend is very high, though whether abnormally so is a matter of dispute. If we sweep these facts under the carpet by not reporting them, any likelihood of our understanding the cultural and social pressures that lie behind the suicides will vanish. Adults' often dim understanding of the minds of young people may be illustrated by the assumption that their behaviour will be shaped by traditional media. There's a lot more going on out there than most of us understand.

Some media representatives have misbehaved in Bridgend. Reporters have allegedly camped outside the homes of parents whose children have killed themselves. The Press Complaints Commission has warned newspapers not to print details about methods of suicide that might encourage copycat suicides, though surely none has been daft enough to do this.

Let's not confuse two issues, though. The people in Bridgend have a right not to have their lives disrupted by journalists; and parents don't want their children to be schooled in the arts of suicide. But nor can the inhabitants of the town or their representatives reasonably expect a story of this importance to be suppressed. What is happening in Bridgend may be of interest to us all – and if the messenger is shot, we won't know anything about it.

There is an alternative universal truth

Lord Beaverbrook maintained that good news sells newspapers, and the theory served the Daily Express well in its heyday. In its more straitened circumstances the paper has not completely forgotten his adage.

Twice in the past two weeks the Express has "splashed" with the news that house prices are going up. There appears to be little, if any, evidence to support this claim. It has not found its way into other newspapers, most of which take the view that house prices are stagnant or declining.

Pedants may say that if you are going to publish good news it had better be true. Isn't this rather narrow-minded?

The Daily Express is more advanced than any other newspaper inasmuch as it constructs an alternative universe – sometimes agreeable, sometimes frightening – which it pretends is real.

Making the case for war, 'Mirror' style

May I suggest a subject for a PhD? Former Daily Mirror political journalists and Iraq war dossiers.

We have long known the role Alastair Campbell, an ex-Daily Mirror political editor, below, played in the production of the two most important dossiers. He prevailed on John Scarlett, then chairman of the joint intelligence committee, to harden up (they would say "clarify") a number of phrases in the September 2002 dossier. In February 2003 he went freelance, presiding over a dossier which ransacked the internet for lurid information, most of which was out-of-date and unattributed.

Now the dossier-writing abilities of another former Mirror political journalist, John Williams have come to light as a result of a Freedom of Information ruling vigorously opposed by the Government. As Press Secretary at the Foreign Office, Mr Williams tried his hand at writing a dossier in early 2002. Some of its phrases were included in the September 2002 dossier, though Mr Williams says this was because both documents drew on the same source.

He also says he was chosen to write a dossier because of his presentational skills, which had been honed at the Mirror. Mr Campbell might say the same. Where subtlety, restraint and balanced judgement were called for – not to mention experience with intelligence – two ex-Mirror political hacks, schooled in the arts of sensational one-sided argument, were allowed to make the case for war.