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Anticipating Questions and Answering them
This page can benefit from past experiences of ashers who have been interviewed by reporters or have participated in a documentary about ash. What questions did the reporters ask. The following are some guesses of mine of what would be likely questions.Doesn't ash encourage suicide?
Answer 1: No. (bridge to one of your key messages)There is a lot of discussion about suicide methods on ash. Doesn't this encourage suicide?
Answer 1: No. The word "Encouragement" implies intention. If I say that you encouraged a person to do an action, this implies that you intended him to perform that action. This was your plan. Thats why we don't say that car manufacturors encourage car accidents. Cars are definitely a cause of car accidents, but the car manufactorors have no intention of the cars being involved in an accident. A better analogy is abortion clinics which are not seen as encouraging abortions, even though performing abortions is their primary activity. Doctors in such clinics do not think that abortion is inherently good. They do not convince women to abort, and do not intend to promote abortion. They only provide an opportunity for woman to chose. Method information allows people to be better informed, but this is not encouragment. (bridge to possible key message about how ash is positive, encourages rationl thought, etc)Ash has caused many suicides, doesn't this demonstrate the damage of ash?
Answer 1: Obviously, suicidal people are more likely to commit suicide, and since suicidal people read ash, then some of them have died, but this doesn't mean that ash is the cause. Many people have committed suicide after being treated by a psycholgist. Would you say that the psychologist caused their suicide? (bridge to possible key message about how ash is positive).The following are questions which you might be answered, but we do not suggest answers
What drew you to the site? How long have you been involved?
Do you feel the site may actually keep some people from committing suicide?
What is the major aim of the website/forum/newsgroup?
What do you think recent media attention has gotten wrong about your community?
Do you worry at all about legal threats (lawsuits or prosecution)? Or do you think courts will decide sites
like yours are simply a matter of free speech?Are you in contact with other suicide support groups? do they have similar concerns?
Do you (and other groups) take all the proper precautions
Does it bother you to be lumped together with other forums in a group in the public mind?
