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Near Commonwealth House (HQ of the Games) – just in case anyone goes hungry

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The positive

power of

the death knock

Bryan Christie

In the half light of a grey Aberdeen tenement, the figure that stood behind the partially opened door was as terrifying as a train crash. I have no recollection of what was said but can remember steeling myself for the anger and possibly even violence that would follow. It never came. Instead, I was invited in and offered a cup of tea. I was a junior reporter and this was my first death knock.

     Death is news, the more so when it affects the young or happens in unusual circumstances. After the police might come the priest, but the local reporter might not be far behind. The death knock is one of the most hated jobs in journalism but one with a long tradition.
     Modern technology has undoubtedly changed things. Today reporters can trawl social media sites for information – and the ever important photographs – about the deceased. Less happily, some have forsaken all human contact and resorted instead to bugging the phones of grieving families like Milly Dowler’s.
     But reporters are still despatched to chap on doors and ask inconsequential questions – How old was he? Where did she go to school? Do you have a picture? At a time when ethics is under the spotlight, what do we think about news organisations sending out inexperienced youths to question people when they are at their lowest? Is this the supreme example of the journalist as vulture, circling the corpse before it is even cooled?
     Still soaked in the sensibilities of a four-year university education, that was certainly my view as I was sent up the stone tenement stairs all those years ago. It is one that is shared by many other reporters according to research carried out by Sallyanne Duncan who runs Strathclyde University’s masters degree in journalism and Jackie Newton of the department of journalism at Liverpool John Moores University.
     Duncan and Newton, both former reporters and no strangers to the death knock, carried out a survey among 53 Scottish journalists which found an almost universal dislike for the task. It was seen as unpleasant, stressful and likely to cause distress. One described himself as ‘a leech’. However, all of those interviewed recognised that it was part of the job of a reporter.
     But it is not a job that most reporters are given any help to prepare for. ‘The common experience of the surveyed journalists was that they were given no advice at all before they were sent to interview a bereaved family. So is there an expectation that the novice reporter should learn "on the job", running the risk of experimenting on the bereaved and potentially getting it wrong?’, ask the two journalists-cum-academics. The question seems rhetorical.

‘If families don’t want to speak to you, then you can leave. If they do, you
will be helping them at a time in their life when they want to feel the
wider community cares about them and shares their sorrow.’

     The macho culture that infected newsrooms back in the days of my door knocking and is still around today meant that asking for advice before heading out on a job was about as acceptable as ordering a sweet sherry in the boozer. Real men (and it was mostly men) did neither. Learning was doing and doing could be difficult.
     The term death knock never made it to Aberdeen. To us, the job was known as a ‘deider’ – the irreverence of the title something of a pained attempt to take the sting out of what was a morbid undertaking (pun intended). But the most surprising thing about this whole experience was the reaction of the grieving. There were doors that were closed quickly, but never in anger. No hostile words were spoken. That may not be a universal experience but, fortunately, it was mine. Then there were the families who opened their doors to share their memories at this dark time.
     ‘It’s the laddie from the paper,’ one woman once shouted down a corridor as if I’d been expected and not just turning up out of nowhere. Often you didn’t have to ask many questions; it just all poured out and it seemed as if talking to a complete stranger seemed to help. Did it provide an excuse to explain, an opportunity to connect again with the person who was gone?
     John Griffith, a former newspaper editor who lost his own son in a road accident, strongly believes in the positive power of the death knock. He is quoted in the research and says the stories that followed his son’s death were a great comfort to the family. His advice to reporters is not to be afraid of knocking on that door. ‘If families don’t want to speak to you, then you can leave. If they do, you will be helping them at a time in their life when they want to feel the wider community cares about them and shares their sorrow.’
     The death knock is a highly charged experience with a curious mix of emotions. The people knocking on the doors feel like vultures/ leeches/ parasites while some of the people who answer seem to extract some solace from the process. Death knocks will never be easy but they seem to serve some kind of purpose. One of the key things to come out of the research is the need to help journalists, especially young reporters, to prepare for the task. There is no easy solution however. Death knocks can only truly be experienced by doing them. Thanks to the efforts of Duncan and Newton, maybe the next generation of hacks will be a little better prepared than their predecessors.

Bryan Christie worked for many years at the Scotsman and has written as a freelance for Scottish and UK newspapers