A bony finger on the doorbell: Journalism's defence of the 'death knock' is self-serving
A bony finger on the doorbell: Journalism's defence of the 'death knock' is self-serving
Plymouth Live decided to avoid 'death knocks' in the wake of the mass shooting in its city. It was right.
Previously: The killer’s byline: Why the British media gives murderers the notoriety they crave…
While the national media littered its coverage with images of the killer and leaned heavily on the most prurient and shocking details of the shootings in Plymouth, the local paper and news website declined to show him1 and focused coverage on the victims and the community. They also decided not to knock on doors to source interviews once the police cordon was raised.
Edd Moore, Digital Editor at Plymouth Live, told Press Gazette that the story is “a really tragic reminder that we’re custodians of the city but we’re all linked – this is our friends, our neighbours, our relatives that we’re reporting on…” His colleague, engagement producer Jess Morcom, is the cousin of Lee Martyn, who was killed with his three-year-old daughter Sophie.
Moore explained the decision not to door knock as simply a matter of empathy:
We all know people who are affected by this. So as far as decision making goes it didn’t even feel like a decision to us – it’s about doing the right thing.
Plymouth Live crime reporter Carl Eve tweeted on Sunday:
… Plymouth Live staff are not doorknocking residents. Any reporter at your door tonight is not from Plymouth Live2. You need time and space to process this. If you want to speak to us later, we’ll be here to listen to you.
That respectful decision was, of course, not matched by the hacks from the nationals who descended on the city. Jess Morcom wrote on Twitter, following a tribute to her relatives, that:
… as someone who works in the industry myself, a large number of national ‘journalists need to be retrained with how to handle intrusion into grief. Turning up at family homes trying to hound is unforgivable. I appreciate the sensitivity shown by local colleagues.
Aaron James, a journalist for another Reach-owned title Cornwall Live, echoed her sentiments writing:
I have equally never been more appalled to be a journalist when I’ve seen how the national media have behaved but at the same time never more proud to be a local journalist on the same team as Jess Morcom. Behind every tragedy are humans. Remember that.
But while Press Gazette gave the Plymouth Live journalists space to talk about the approach they took to the story, the title’s UK Editor, Freddie Mayhew, wrote in defence of the ‘death knock’ in its daily newsletter:
However, while knocking doors in the wake of a tragedy – known rather morbidly as a "death knock" – is one of the less savoury aspects of journalism, it is nonetheless important. It helps to reveal truth when gossip might be spreading falsehoods and alarm.
Not contacting people also assumes they do not want to speak. This is not necessarily true. Coming together to talk about an issue, whether intended for publication or not, helps us all to process tragedies.
I’ve heard this argument put forward in various forms many times over the years and I’ve come to consider it a very self-serving one.
If the families of those killed in traumatic circumstances want to speak to the newspapers or TV broadcasters it is not difficult for them to get in contact. The notion that unsolicited approaches at family homes usually do more than add to the stress of already traumatised people is fanciful.
The impetus behind most ‘death knocks’ is not to seek revelations but to get emotional ‘colour’ and detail that your rivals don’t have.
“Coming together to talk about an issue” does “help us process tragedies” but multiple reporters leaning on your doorbell hunting for a quote and, if possible, a heartbreaking home movie or candid photograph of your loved one is not “coming together”. It’s being hunted.
Dan Hett, whose brother Martyn Hett was killed in the Manchester Arena bombing, created a game to illustrate what the ‘death knock’ experience is like in the social media age. Sorry To Bother You tasks players with separating veiled requests from journalists from genuine messages of condolence (“…’like’ the real messages, and trash the journalist ones”.)
Hett explained to Buzzfeed News:
Probably more than most I understand the need to tell a story, we’re news-hungry people, that stuff has to happen – but the aim of the game is to show the way in which it’s done during unfolding events is not OK.
In the hours after the arena bombing, he tweeted an image of a journalist’s business card and the message:
I have dealt with 50+ journos online today. Two found my mobile number. This cunt found my house. I still don't know if my brother is alive.
That is the reality of the ‘death knock’: Vultures on the telephone lines. And while Hett later said he regretted that tweet, he was right to feel so angry at being asked for comment even as he waited for news of his brother.
An Independent article from 2017, Inside the world of the ‘death knock’, which discusses Hett’s case among others, takes the familiar line that journalists have to do ‘death knocks’ and contains this passage:
It’s quite as grim as it sounds. Upon receiving the news of a death – from a road accident, a murder, a drowning, a drugs overdose, pretty much anything you can think of – a reporter is despatched to knock on the door of the grieving family and come back with the information drilled into every trainee journalist from day one: who, what, when, where, why, how. Your notebook must be full of emotive, heart-rending quotes. There must be a photograph of the deceased. It will probably make the front page.
David Barnett, the writer of the piece and an ex-local newspaper journalist, argues that the fact that most on local newspapers on any given week contain stories derived from death knocks means they are justified.
I don’t buy that argument. Many people who find themselves with a journalist on their doorstep feel pressure to answer. There’s the fear that their loved one may be misrepresented if they don’t speak and it’s one that the more unscrupulous members of the profession exploit both implicitly and sometimes explicitly.
Barnett quotes the IPSO guidelines in his article…
In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively.
… but when a hack pack descends on the scene of a horrific event like the one in Portsmouth that ‘rule’ goes out of the window. And if dozens of reporters bombard you with requests, ringing your phone right off the table, it doesn’t really matter how sensitive each individual may or may not be, the cumulative effect cannot help but increase the stress and trauma.
Similarly the IPSO guideline on harassment…
… must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals once asked to desist; nor remain on property when asked to leave and must not follow them. If requested, they must identify themselves and whom they represent.
… when multiple papers and news agencies are after details about your family.
Barnett recounts the story of his first death knock, which involved a man in his early twenties who had died of a brain haemorrhage. Only 19 himself he ended up knocking three times (asked to come back later the first two times by the man’s mother as his father was out). On the third visit, he was asked inside and spent time talking about the man with his parents. He recalls:
The story appeared on the front page the next day.
I took back the portrait, and received the profuse thanks of the family, who had felt that seeing their son’s life celebrated in their local newspaper had helped them to cope in some way.
But there is clearly a difference between someone who died of an illness, however sudden and shocking, and someone who was killed in a violent act.
A piece from The Irish Times in 2014 — Death knocks: the dark side of journalism — is more honest about ‘death knocks’, largely because it was written anonymously. The unnamed journalist writes:
She had been crying for two hours. That’s how long it had been since her son had died. And here I was, knocking at her door, notebook in my pocket, smartphone in hand, to record her every word.
I had left my shame at the kerb.
Later in the piece, they discuss the mechanics of the process frankly:
My experience of working with various editors over the years, it doesn’t matter if the death has just taken place. Even in the case of a baby’s death, the pressure is on reporters from radio and TV stations to talk to the family and to get the all-important quotes and pictures.
Sometimes local councillors are willing accomplices in this practice, colluding in identifying the victim’s address and even giving background information.
The stories are legion. I have twice been asked to approach a family in hospital while their child was recovering in intensive care. I didn’t try very hard.
I have heard, on multiple occasions, news editors cheering at the news of a tragedy involving an attractive woman.
And unlike Mayhew’s high-handed description of the value of the ‘death knock’, the Irish Times contributor writes bluntly about the gulf between the clean theory of journalism courses and the reality of newsrooms:
Some journalism courses include ethics modules, in which lecturers who may not have seen a newsroom since the 1970s expound upon Aristotle and Kant, Christ and Marx, for thousands in fees. Graduates will tell you that it’s only upon entering an actual newsroom that you begin to see how little relation it all has to practice.
“Once I was sent to the funeral of a young guy, a GAA goalkeeper,” recalls a colleague whose editor was notorious for ordering repeated death knocks.
“I felt like an intruder, as you would, but I got some quotes and briefed [my editor], hoping to get away.”
Fat chance. “I was ordered to pressure the dead man’s parents to leave their only son’s funeral, walk to the local pitch, and stand in the goalmouth holding his picture.”
When bereaved families refuse to parley, Facebook sites are purloined for pictures, sometimes with consent, sometimes without.
It’s jackal behaviour and the notion that it is done to “give the families peace” or to “commemorate the dead” is so much horseshit. It’s about competition.
Every industry has practices that old hands will justify with the dread phrases “We’ve always done it this way,” and “This is just how it’s done.” But it’s not how it has to be done. There are many ways to tell stories even in the most harrowing of circumstances. Plymouth Live has shown that this week.
But there’s an ersatz ‘toughness’ among certain hacks that they want to continue, a belief that ‘death knocks’ are the making of a journalist. It’s the same mentality I saw when reporting on the Bataclan terror attacks and an ITN producer came over to the distraught man I was speaking with to tell him to be quiet because they were “live”.
The Irish Times piece has a clear-eyed conclusion:
The death-knock, for one, is so prevalent that it’s accepted as normal by reporters. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard, “I wish I didn’t have to do this.” But we don’t. Maybe the real disgrace is not that we are ordered to be so insensitive, but that we acquiesce in being so.
The reporters and editors at Plymouth Live have realised that — this time at least — but I have little hope that their counterparts at the nationals will ever ditch their vulture circling ways. Too many of them are willing to trade other people’s trauma for a front-page byline and a sensational splash.
Plymouth Live is collecting donations to support local families affected by the events in the city. You can donate here.
They did name the killer, in order to accurately report the events.
It’s far from uncommon for national hacks to pretend to be from the local paper in order to get their foot in the door.