This morning on NPR, a discussion of the new film The Believer made mention of the famous 1965 case on which it was based, in which New York Times reporter McCandless Phillips dscovered that Ku Klux Klan organizer Daniel Burros was Jewish. Burros threatened to kill himself if this fact was made public. It was, and he did.

So, here's a question for discussion:

You have a newsworthy, factually-accurate story ready to go to press (or weblog or whatever), but a subject of that story has threatened to kill himself if you publish it. What do you do? Do you publish the story anyway? Withdraw the story? Report the suicide threat to law enforcment or mental health professionals, and then publish it anyway?

Does it make any difference to your answer what sort of person the subject is?

If you do publish the story, are you in any way responsible if the subject proceeds to kill himself as threatened?