Column's strong opinions provoke backlash

By: RANDY DOTINGA - For the North County Times | Wednesday, September 22, 2004 11:32 AM PDT ∞

My e-mail box began to fill up with dozens of messages last Friday morning, a full day after my weekly column appeared in this space. From all parts of the county came tirades calling me "judgmental," "irresponsible" and "despicable," not to mention incompetent.

It turned out that the morning hosts of KGB and Channel 933 had just taken me to the woodshed for criticizing their decision to allow a suicidal man to speak on the airwaves. They stood by their actions.

"My only thought from the moment I realized what was going on that morning was, 'How can we make this work out for the best?'" said Channel 933's A.J. Machado during his show.

A quick recap: On Sept. 13, a man called Machado's studio to say "goodbye," sounding as if he was near suicide. Machado and KGB morning co-host Dave Rickards talked to the man in private, then Rickards put him on the air. "Greg" described his problems, expressed concern that his friends would hear him and reminded Rickards that he'd said he "didn't want to do this on the air." During his extended on-air conversation, Greg also talked to a therapist, his mother and a friend and tried to apologize to listeners. Soon, he appeared at KGB studios and received assistance.

On Friday, on the air, Machado and the hosts of "Dave, Shelly & Chainsaw" accused me of distorting the truth and making a number of factual errors.

"He got it all wrong, that's for sure," Rickards said.

There was one mistake in the column ---- Rickards' wife died in 2003, not 2002 ---- and I should have checked into the backstory behind Greg's call instead of relying purely on a tape of the broadcast.

Behind the scenes, "we called the police, followed their instructions, put our shows on the back burner and tried to help the man," Machado said.

Rickards told listeners he resented my criticism that the stations didn't act quickly enough to get Greg access to a professional. (Greg spoke to a therapist more than 20 minutes into the on-air call, which itself came after the 45-minute private call.)

"It's almost like, short of having our own degrees in psychotherapy, that we failed this guy by not having one (a therapist) on 24-hour call on staff here," Rickards said. "Dude, we talked the guy down, we got him a good night's sleep, we got him into therapy."

Machado added: "I hope you never find yourself scrambling to jot notes down to be relayed to the police while your hands shake from the urgency of the situation. I hope you never have to feel your stomach constrict into knots when you hear a dial tone on the other end of the phone."

He misses the point. As a reader from El Cajon pointed out in an e-mail, there was a simple, common-sense approach to the crisis: "I was screaming at the radio for Dave to simply transfer the call to a suicide hotline."

But Greg needlessly ended up on the air instead. In his defense, Machado said Greg asked for on-air help finding his friend and perhaps getting access to a professional therapist. But that could have been done without broadcasting his voice or exposing his inner demons. By airing the call, KGB flirted with disaster. It's not hard to imagine what could have gone wrong, and the fact that it didn't is hardly evidence that the station made the right choice.

Suicide experts were divided about the decision to put the call on the air.

"When you're faced with a unique situation, what can you do, what can anybody do?" asked Dr. Jerome Motto, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at UC San Francisco who has studied Golden Gate Bridge suicides. "You use your judgment and let intuition be your guide."

Dr. Herbert Hendin, a psychiatrist and medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, was critical.

"They were exploiting the situation in order to attract their audience," Hendin said. "Talking to him over the phone was appropriate. They just didn't need to bring him on the air."

Hendin advises broadcasters against interviewing even formerly suicidal people about their experiences.

"The danger is that you attract people who think their suicidal behavior is a way to get noticed," he said. "That's exactly the wrong kind of message you want to send. Anything you do that dramatizes or sensationalizes it (suicide) has a contagious effect on people."

On the other hand, it's possible that Greg's call could have actually encouraged troubled people to seek help, said David Phillips, a UC San Diego sociologist who has studied the deadly aftereffects of highly publicized suicides.

"In the absence of studies, you don't know whether the effect of this was positive, negative or neutral."

However, the suicidal call could have ended disastrously, Phillips said.

"If the person had died, it would have been a bad thing in all sorts of ways."

So now what? San Diego's radio stations should consult professionals and set guidelines about what to do when suicidal listeners call in. Even with the best intentions, never again should a station risk everything by turning private pain into public spectacle.

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For the record: On Friday, KGB co-host Shelly Dunn said on the air that I misquoted her in a 2000 profile as saying her show's hosts were a "(bad word), a dork and a dear." As that column made clear, those words came out of my mouth, not hers.

The local suicide hotline number is (800) 479-3339. E-mail Randy Dotinga at NCTimesRadio@aol.com.