Death knocks and me

RESPECTED journalist and trainer Chris Wheal recently found himself on the other side of media interest in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.

His nine-year-old nephew died in an accident while playing on a rope swing.

Chris has written that helping liaise with journalists amid the blaze of publicity which followed the tragedy has made him feel useful and that he could actually do something at this bleakest of times.

But he has also spoken up about how his family have been treated by the media and how he would like to see things changed.

It's a discussion that has interested me very much, not only because of the years I spent either going out on or sending reporters out on death knocks but also because members of my family also faced unwanted press attention after a death.

Who knows, perhaps this shaped my own attitude when tackling that most feared and loathed aspect of a reporter's job.

Yet people wrote me letters and sent me cards to say thank you. Many people told their stories willingly, others were persuaded.

Some told me to fuck off so I went and didn't go back.

I left a *very* long comment on Chris's blog so thought perhaps I should also share some of it here.

Before I trained to be a reporter my teenage cousin was killed in a road accident and my auntie and uncle were quite clear in their instruction to the media that they should be left alone. These were indeed different times and they were left alone and this was not a story that was going to make the nationals.

It’s now more than 10 years since I left local papers where I worked as a reporter and later in more senior positions, moving from the one doing the death knock to the one sending people out on them.

Like others, when I read a suggestion that the police should play a role in this process, of allowing those who want to do so to speak to the media, I do balk at it a little because of experiences where press and police have not worked so well together. These experiences, albeit a long time ago now, have shaped an impression that such a system could be very, very problematic.

Personally, I really like Chris's suggestion of pooled interviews. I can remember two instances where I have taken part in or got copy from these. One was about eight years ago I think when a baby twin was abducted from a hospital. The family agreed to one interview through PA I think while the baby was still missing. That worked well. The PA reporter asked any question and pursued all angles to satisfy the most insistent of newsdesks and their copy begged no questions. Their resulting copy could be adapted by anyone from a women’s weekly to a broadsheet. I was “brought up” to trust and respect PA copy and would never have considered it “churnalism” to use it — that was what we did when PA was supplying the best information we were going to get and there was no way of improving on it. We wouldn’t call a family from out of our area if we felt everything had been covered. It was somehow made very clear that these parents should not be contacted by other media organisations and as far as I remember, this was respected.

Before that I remember another baby was abducted and reunited more quickly with his mum in Birmingham. I remember travelling to a hospital as a reporter from an evening paper in the area and, if I remember correctly, not knowing which of the assembled press was going to conduct the interview right up until when the interview started. I think the local TV got the opportunity and we were asked to put questions to them to ask. At the time, this resulted, I have no doubt, in professional frustrations that the reporter doing the job wouldn’t have the conversation any of the other reporters in the room would have and we all sort of strutted around muttering that we would have done it better, got a better quote, jumped more quickly on some nuance that the mum gave in what she was saying, got a better “line.” Twenty years on I think, what the hell were we all thinking? We weren’t giving a moment’s thought to the mum’s state of mind. But we were thinking of our stories, our papers and the bollockings we would get from the newsdesk if we didn’t do a better job than anyone else.

On one paper, where I worked for a very short while, they had a policy of ringing a bereaved relative and getting copy approval when you came back off a death knock. I remember finding this very awkward and muttering lots about why copy approval should be sought, but this was the result of the editorial team thinking of the relatives. I suppose the reasoning was that the read through was for the sake of accuracy and to avoid more trauma. But typically, as a reporter I would have thought more about the “ethics” of the possibility being asked to change copy rather than the feelings of a bereaved family.

I am racking my brains to try and remember what training we were given to do death knocks. I can’t remember any. There must have been some.

But I also remember working on another paper, where we were quite clearly encouraged to think of ourselves as competing with the nationals and the pressure there to ‘get a result’ from a death knock was completely different — I remember being sent out to interview people who kept their deceased children’s rooms as “shrines” to them. I don’t think I have ever been so affected by a story as I was when I saw the Blue Peter Tracy Island a young boy had made still in his room years after he was knocked off his bike and killed. The photographer with me got punched while we were out on that story and his camera thrown to the floor, of course all anyone was interested in was if the pics had survived, there was no mention of how the family must be feeling to make them act that way. That was completely normal to me.

Just to add in my days as a news editor on a regional paper, there were circumstances where I would send someone back out on a death knock — and that would be when they pretended they had been but hadn’t really found the courage. This happened more than once.

At the time, a stressed out me found that pretty irksome, but with the benefit of hindsight and a more chilled out, no longer working in regional papers frame of mind, I can see that what’s called for is more education/training for reporters being sent out.

While I was training to be a reporter, I went to a wedding where the groom died. The bride was a snapper with the local paper, I remember the newsdesk demanded her colleague who was of course a guest at the wedding hand over pics of them laughing together and posing, hours before he died, even though she didn’t want anyone to see those pictures. I think a friend of a grieving widow ended up facing disciplinary action for trying to protect her wishes. I remember thinking that if this was how papers treated “their own” what chance did anyone else have?

But like so many of us, it didn’t stop me becoming a pretty ‘hard’ operator in some ways though and I’ll never be proud of myself for that. I was ambitious and I wanted to do well in this profession. I did lots of death knocks and sometimes I sat and cried at home later on.

How do we deal with the cumulative effect of our actions? I for one would just like to see more people remember they were a human being before they were a reporter or news editor.

 

Comments

[ExpatMum via BMB]

Very honest piece. I have just read (forgive me) Piers Morgan's auto - it was left by a guest in my house, -honestly. It shows the same thought process of getting the story.
Have to say though, living in the USA's 2nd crime capital (I think) we have homicides in the local news on a nightly basis and there are cameras shoved in the faces of mothers (usually) less than a few hours after their gang member sons have been killed. I always wonder how they can do this, but in reality, the media are preying on a shocked parent.
Similarly, we are currently going through the trial of Illinois' ex-governer Blagovajich, who is accused of trying to sell Obama's out-going senate seat. (Racketeering). There are so many reporters outside the court building that no one can be heard to ask a question. Terrible journalism as a result.
If anything ever happened to me, I think I would be tempted to hire a spokesperson.
On the other hand - I've always loved an audience...... Rat-a-ta-dah!

[Emma]

It's awful to say but I never considered the family until we were put into this situation.

My cousin was murdered when he was 14 and we had Reporters banging on my Grandma's door for 3 days and nights straight!

They didn't care that she was in her late 70's, only that she was related! Maybe there could be a link between Victim Support & the Press for when people wanted to talk??

[Linda]

Hi Emma, that sounds terrible, just awful, doesn't bear thinking about. Do check out the proposals on Chris Wheal's blog: www.chriswheal.com/blog, he's suggesting much closer cooperation between various agencies.