Brown calls for 'sensitivity' in suicide film row

Dec 10, 2008, 15:45 GMT

London - Controversy over the planned screening of a TV documentary of a man ending his own life in an assisted suicide bid raged in Britain Wednesday, prompting Prime Minister Gordon Brown to call on the media to avoid 'sensationalism.'

Just hours before the film The Right To Die? by Canada's Oscar-winning director John Zaritsky was to be screened by Sky TV, Brown said it would be a 'matter for the TV watchdogs' to decide whether the film would actually be shown.

'I think it is very important that these issues are dealt with sensitively and without sensationalism and I hope broadcasters remember that they have a wider responsibility to the general public,' Brown said in parliament.

He had always opposed legislation on assisted deaths, Brown revealed.

'These are very difficult issues and we should all remember that at the heart of any single individual case are families and people in very difficult circumstances who have to make for themselves very difficult choices,' said Brown.

His comments came after Sky defended the screening of the documentary in its Real Lives series later Wednesday.

The film is a record of the assisted suicide in September, 2006, of 59-year-old Craig Ewert, a US university professor who lived in Britain, and who allowed Zaritsky to film his death.

Ewert suffered from motor neurone disease and chose to die rather than endure the 'torture' he feared from his degenerative condition.

At the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, with his wife Mary by his side, the father-of-two will be seen drinking a mixture of sedatives and turning off his own ventilator using his teeth, advance reports said.

'This is an issue that more and more people are confronting and this documentary is an informative, articulate and educated insight into the decisions some people have to make,' said a spokeswoman for the Sky programme, due to be shown at 2100 GMT Wednesday.

However, church groups, anti-euthanasia organizations and media watchdogs have criticized the planned showing. Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain.

'It's a slippery slope. The danger is that we start to believe in a story that there is such a thing as a life not worth living,' said Peter Saunders, director of campaign group Care Not Killing.

John Beyer of media watchdog Mediawatch UK said: 'Im not sure whether the moment of death is something for television but the real concern is whether this is influencing the public in a way that shouldn't be.'