San Bruno B.A.R.T.

  After a recent spate of people taking their lives in front of speeding trains on Caltrain tracks, one prominent rail safety official said he is convinced that newspaper and TV coverage is spurring copycat suicides.

  "The media's job is to report, no question about it," said Art Lloyd, president of the state chapter of Operation Lifesaver and a member of Caltrain's board of directors. "But part of the suicide problem is people looking in the newspaper and thinking 'This is a good way to take my life.'"

  The link between media coverage and suicide is a thorny question with no clear-cut answer, but one Caltrain officials have often grappled with as they seek to stop suicides that have claimed the lives of 118 people since 1992.

  Lloyd calls the phenomenon the "Golden Gate Syndrome," after heavy media coverage of jumpers from the Golden Gate Bridge, he believes, drew other people to take their lives in the same way.

  Lloyd said he would not tell the media how to cover Caltrain suicides, but said press accounts of deaths are often too sensational. Many other Caltrain officials don't see a link between media coverage and suicide.

  "(Suicide victims) are already in a certain state of mind," said Mike Nevin, a County Supervisor and a Caltrain board member. "I don't see how what's printed in the newspaper really affects that."

  But at least one study shows coverage of suicide by a prominent newspaper or television news may have the effect of increasing suicide among readers or viewers, especially when suicide stories are frequent and prominently played.

  In 1994, an Austrian research team found suicides and attempted suicides in front of the Vienna subway dropped by 80 percent in the six months after reporters began covering the suicides less extensively and dramatically.

  The total number of suicides in Vienna also dropped as well.

  Local newspapers defended their coverage of Caltrain suicides.

  "Caltrain is a form of public transportation that people take, so they need to know about suicides," said Jamie Casini, mid-County editor for The Independent. "I just feel that a person that is going to commit suicide is very depressed ... they are going to commit suicide anyway regardless of newspaper coverage."

  Eve Meyer, executive director of the San Francisco Suicide Prevention, said there are steps newspapers can take steps to present a balanced picture of suicides.

  "Stories should be written matter-of-factly," Meyer said. "They should also not make the suicide seem inevitable, mysterious or magnetic in any way."

  Caltrain officials said they would never ask the media to stop covering suicides, even though since the 1980s most media outlets have curtailed their coverage of people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

  "It's not an apple to apple comparison," said Rita Haskin, chief communications officer for Caltrain. "When someone commits suicide in front of Caltrain, it affects hundreds of riders and can close streets. A Caltrain suicide has an impact beyond someone just jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge."

  But Caltrain officials have undertaken a vigorous campaign to curb images of unsafe use of the rails in the media. Caltrain officials wrote to Macy's a few years ago when the department store ran a clothing add featuring people walking on train tracks.

  They have also written letters to The Times and San Francisco Chronicle, when similar pictures have appeared in those newspapers.

  In recent years, Caltrain officials have taken a number of steps to curb suicides, including fencing in sections of track and posting hundreds of signs that have suicide prevention hotline phone numbers along the rails and in stations.

  So far, there have been six deaths on the rails this year, including five suicides. The County Coroner has not made a ruling on the sixth death.