The death of the death-knock

Remembering back to my days on a local newspaper, the phrase guaranteed to strike fear in my heart was “get out and do a death-knock”.

I was not alone. I often heard the thud of a fellow hack’s heart hitting the floor when those words came their way. They were about to carry the most dreaded part of a reporter’s job.

Knocking on the door of someone whose son, daughter, brother or parents have just died in tragic circumstances to ask “how they feel” is gut wrenching - pure and simple.

And to some, the worst form of intrusion.

But when you read how a teenager killed in a road crash two days ago, was the “light of their parents’ lives” - remember that is exactly how the story made it to your breakfast table.

The first death-knock is the absolute worst.

I would honestly rather have visited an axe murderer released from a 20-year prison stint than the freshly-bereaved mother and father I was about to call on at probably the worst moment of their lives.

During my career it has fallen on me to do it several times, and it is the interview that never gets easier.

It starts with looking for the house, and usually going through the toe-curling process of knocking on doors asking neighbours where the family live - “you know, the one that was just killed in that horror smash”.

It is the neighbours that can give you the hardest time, and rookie reporters would do well to prepare for this.

Be ready for “you have got to be joking, sod off you scum”, or “you damn parasite”, or, and I’ve had this, “get out of my sight before I set the dogs on you” (they were three Rottweilers).

When you eventually find it, you walk up to that front door with your heart thumping in your mouth, praying nobody is home so you can make a sharp exit.

How do I introduce myself? What do I say? Do I offer condolences and sympathy or just get straight down to business and get out?


The door opens and they spot the note book. They see the pen, and they clock the look on your face that says “please believe me I would rather be anywhere but here” but also “can we get a move on with this as the paper goes to print in an hour”.

You may say anyone who makes it this far must have a hide like a rhino - true, and absolutely no standards of moral decency - not true.

Remember I said, you have probably read one of those stories over morning coffee while remarking “how sad, he used to go to school with our Bobby”.

A recent study into the journalistic art of death-knocking found the family of people killed in high-profile circumstances often welcome the local reporter on their doorstep. They actually feel let down if one fails to show up.

But more and more journalists rely on social media sites for information about people who have recently died. The face-to-face visit is becoming a victim of the lazy reporter.

Within hours there is usually a Facebook group set up in memory of the deceased and it rapidly becomes flooded with messages of condolence.

Reporters often lift these to piece together their obit, the need to knock on doors and speak to family face to face is gradually disappearing.

The study by Jackie Newton, of Liverpool John Moores University, and Dr Sallyanne Duncan, of the University of Strathclyde, found attempts to protect the bereaved through regulation following the Leveson Inquiry could “backfire” by discouraging journalists from contacting families.

It found families feel excluded from reports about the deaths of loved ones, and usually don’t feel intruded on when a reporter knocks on their door.

In my experience, this has been the case.

I knocked on the door of two people who had discovered their son’s body the previous morning, hanging strangled from a cord on a flag-pole in their garden.

The door opened and I told them who I was, their faces were still tear streaked and they could hardly put a sentence together, I offered to come back later.

But they insisted I came in, and thanked me for wanting to do a tribute to their son. Over the next hour they poured out their hearts out to me.

They told me everything I wanted to know from how they discovered his body to what he was like growing up.

It was uncomfortable, but in that extreme situation there was an intimate sense of honesty and openness between us, no barriers.

I felt a bond with those two people, cemented by a mix of gratitude to them for giving me my front page, guilt at exploiting their situation, and a warm sense of knowing I would write a sensitive, respectful tribute to their son.

They thanked me and shook my hand, and I knew I had been the first person they had spoken to at length about their son since he died.

There are several reasons why I think it would be a travesty if the death-knock became a thing of the past.

Being pragmatic, it is the one job that really separates the men from the boys in the newsroom, some just can’t do it.

You are their to get a story, and frequently that involves asking difficult questions in difficult situations. The death knock is the real test, it is a grounding all reporters should go through.

Lifting tributes from a social network is cold, emotionless and lazy. It must be devastating to open a paper and see an in depth study of your loved one stringed together “miss u m8” and “u wer the best, luv u 4eva”.

Newton and Duncan said “many people have a reasonable expectation that their local paper will cover the death of their loved one in a sensitive manner and that they will be given a role in that coverage”.

And I think they are right.

I hope the post-Leveson fallout won’t infringe on a families right to tell their story by making it difficult for reporters to seek out the real story.

I think it is a reporter’s duty to make that visit, and if you can’t hack it, as they say, don’t play the game.