John Roughan: Mere mortal turns hero after death

This time last week not many could probably have named the character we had sometimes seen on TV thrashing around with crocodiles; it was always compelling television, but that is all.

Then he died.

We have witnessed, this week, another of these modern media feeding frenzies that leaves me worried one minute and warmed the next.

The worry is that in this industry we have discovered we can turn something into a much bigger story than it once would have been, and it truly becomes as big as we make it. That is to say, people read and talk about it.

There is no objective means of predicting these things. Just rules of thumb. On Monday when news came through of the crocodile man's death it was one of those things you mentioned to somebody who had missed the bulletin. Not many items do that. It made this one fairly big.

Television news programmes that night put the item first and gave it plenty of time. The next morning's newspapers played it even bigger in their terms. It covered most of the Herald's front page and continued across two pages inside. Over the next 24 hours the Australian's death led newspapers around the world.

His country was reported to be "in a state of shock" that he had been killed while filming another of his death-defying encounters with sea creatures for a documentary to be called Ocean's Deadliest.

In the pages of print and hours of radio talk he became not merely a likeable character, or just a crocodile hunter as he had called his television programme, he was a passionate conservationist, a seriously good bloke, a great Australian who "touched the lives" of millions worldwide.

When a story is played that big it cannot be dropped after a single day and, in the way of these things, this one quickly began to feed on itself. Commentators remarked on the impact his death had made and agreed there was more to this man than they had realised.

But my point is, this was not just happening in the media. You probably heard conversation, as I did, about how much he meant to the kids and how they doted on his programmes. I now half-believe his face has been on posters in children's bedrooms for years and families have gathered around his programme on the wildlife channel every week.

I have heard that this week and I am in no position to doubt it. Who is? With the plethora of television channels available these days, who knows what other people are watching? It is possible these days that half a million people could be tuning into a programme each week and none might realise so many others were doing so.

News assessment is a subtle art. You can give saturation coverage to the death of a minor celebrity and nobody seems to mind. On the other hand, you could have recorded that death with a single paragraph and nobody would have felt deprived.

In the industry we like to believe we reflect public interest rather than manufacture it; that is the worry. But when I try to work out the reason stories like this succeed, it is exalting.

Overwrought news nearly always involves a death. Diana's was the classic, the first to dominate more time and space than anyone would have previously thought fitting for anything less than the outbreak of World War III.

And it felt as though readers were demanding it. News editors, lacking today's daily audience research, started each morning wondering whether the time had arrived to taper it off. But, when it came to the point, their instinct said the fire was still burning. It was a mass experience bigger even than the appeal of the Princess in life and far beyond the power of all media together to create.

To a much lesser degree the same principle was at work last month after the death of the Maori Queen. The tangi and burial dominated the news for several days and captured the attention of many more New Zealanders than had previously shown much interest in an ersatz monarchy.

What is happening, I think, is that the death of someone we all know, even one as silent as a Queen or as shallow as a television showman, is a profound thing to share.

Any death brings people together, not only in their shared acquaintance with the individual but in the awe everyone feels at a funeral. Death, any death, is a reminder of mortality and, with it, of the triviality of most of life's imperfections and disputes.

Funerals strive to be a celebration of a life and most succeed. It is not hard. Whatever negative views you developed of someone alive, they become negligible. It is as though we do not realise the splendour of a life, any life, until we see its death.

It is extremely hard in this business to write a critical obituary. Every impulse is to warm the reputation. What is more, the gently appreciative fruit of that impulse feels more accurate than the criticism the living person might have deserved.

When media make a big story of someone's death, everyone is caught up in the warmth and appreciation of a life. It feels good, even if it cannot be done particularly well. The language becomes solemn and sonorous, the observations banal and the material repetitive. There is only so much to be said but nobody minds.

His name was a household word by Wednesday. But now, I'm not so sure. So you remember it?