Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelbuddy | Hacker News Reader

I didn't see that as sarcasm. If you say somebody died 25 years below the average life span, really there's no excuse not to either put the cause of death, or specifically state that it wasn't released, or that "at time of publication, was unknown or witheld" And you could put some information around it if there was a previous illness reported or a history of X in the family.

Yahoo does get points for using the word "dies" instead of "passes away" Any journalist / editor worth anything knows everybody "dies". You don't try to soften the articles with fancy language. But they failed the "who what when where why."

View on HN

In the UK: a person dies. Their obituary is printed. Their death may be investigated by a coroner before the death is registered. This can sometimes take over a year. So journalists risk contempt of court if they speculate on cause of death. And there's still a strong stigma around some forms of death - suicide, alcoholism, etc. So in those cases the public's "right to know" has to be balanced against the family's right to privacy. (And on a slight tangent many newspaper make a terrible mess of reporting suicide, often significantly raising risk of suicide in people reading those poor quality reports).

If the cause of death was health related (mental or physical) is it really any of our business? I feel these are private matters, and if the family wish to withhold the cause of death then that's their prerogative. We should not expect nor be entitled to demand to know how a person passed away under certain circumstances. The fact of their death is enough for me to know.

on the one hand I agree with you.. death is a personal affair. on the other hand I feel like if they are going to put it in the public domain, they should expect that people will want to know the cause of death, especially (as someone else pointed out), if their death seems to be at a reasonably younger age...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com