“The journalist always rings twice”: Dr Glenda Cooper hosts collaborative event at SCC Festival 2025

In times of crisis, journalists face difficult ethical decisions—one of the most challenging being the ‘death knock’, which is interviewing grieving families in the aftermath of a tragedy.

Dr Glenda Cooper, Head of the Department for Journalism at City St George’s, University of London, hosted a session on this topic on campus at the Tooting Medical School.

The lecture came as part of the School of Communication & Creativity’s (SCC) second annual festival, which showcases the talent, research and vibrant community within the School.

Dr Cooper’s lecture brought together an audience with various backgrounds in journalism and in medicine and explored what professionals in these different fields can learn from each other when navigating these sensitive moments.

In January 2021, BBC presenter Clive Myrie interviewed Martin Freeborn just 30 minutes after his wife’s passing of illnesses related to Covid-19. This decision sparked debate.

Dr Cooper noted that while such interviews can be distressing, research suggests that avoiding them altogether, such as relying on social media for information, can also be harmful to families.

One audience member, who is a retired doctor, said she still remembered the first time she had to deliver bad news to a family. She noted how when she was a trainee doctor, she was able to observe and learn from more senior doctors revealing the news while they were in the same room.

For many trainee journalists, being sent to doorstep families – which is when reporters wait outside of someone’s home for them to come outside in order to interview them – is one of the first tasks they are assigned by their editors.

Often, the culture within newsrooms is that doing this is a rite of passage that is unpleasant but a crucial part of a journalist’s training.

Dr Cooper worked as a journalist in New York during the 9/11 terrorist attack and faced many similar ethical dilemmas.

Because so many young and inexperienced reporters are tasked with this job, she knew it needed to be a key part of the training provided by SCC’s journalism programmes.

In these classes, students are tasked with empathy exercises wherein they imagine the different types of personalities they may encounter, think about what they are feeling, and role play to practice different approaches.

While some people may not want to speak to journalists at first, Dr Cooper noted that “many people want their loved one’s death to be marked.”

The event is one of the cross-collaborations between Schools since legacy City and legacy Tooting merged to form one University in August 2024, bringing together expertise in journalism and medicine.