There is a tradition dating back to ancient Egyptian times for professional mourners who would turn up at funerals of people they had never met. They would perform various roles – wailing uncontrollably, dancing, or just paying their respects. They can be found in the Old Testament, and the first reports of it in China are from the 8th century.

A similar service was on offer in Essex for £45 until the middle of 2019. According to rentamourner.co.uk it closed down because it was “too difficult to scale this operation to serve the whole country”. Bizarre as it might sound, there was a market for it – providing solace to a family who wanted there to be more people at a funeral. To suspend reality or to give someone the send off they deserved.

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Social media has in a way made professional mourners of us all. While it is no one’s place to tell anyone else how to express sadness or pain, it sometimes feels there is a race to grieve. A race to care. A race to show that you have the most compassion.

After the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, a few people asked why we hadn’t mentioned him on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, which I hosted on Monday. One tweeter could not believe we hadn’t. I have been criticised before for failing to acknowledge someone’s passing, as if not commenting is a sign of indifference.

You like to imagine everyone’s default setting at such a tragedy and such a loss of life would be shock, sadness and compassion. How can it be anything else? Yet we are now judged if we say something and judged if we don’t. Feeling compelled to publicly announce our sadness makes it start to feel like some kind of transaction.

And before long we are wasting our time caring more about whether Luís Figo has copied Cristiano Ronaldo’s post of condolence and we have stopped thinking about the nine people who lost their lives – three of them teenagers.

We did not discuss Bryant on the podcast. Some listeners in the US – or those who loved Bryant – might have turned to us for some escape from the wall to wall coverage it received there.

There is a relentlessness to way the traditional media deals with tragedy and death. It can have a cold, transactional feel to it. You have a responsibility to cover the news respectfully but you have brutal conversations. This person is dead. Should we do the whole show on it? Or just half an hour and get back to the transfer news? I’ve had those conversations. What is a life really worth?

Last year I came on air minutes after we’d heard that Gordon Banks had died. We had to dedicate the show to him, his life, and his impact on football. That meant producers ringing up his friends and colleagues. They would often be the one to tell them that Banks had died – the kind of thing doctors are trained to do – and then ask them to come on air in five minutes’ time. I distinctly remember how eloquently Bob Wilson spoke of his friend. He painted a beautiful picture of a great man and would have felt a sense of duty to speak well of him. Yet I don’t know if it was right to put him in that position.

I was at Sky with Paul Merson the day we heard of the sudden death of Ugo Ehiogu. Merse had played with Ugo at Aston Villa and he was rushed on to Sky Sports News. He spoke amazingly, breaking down at one point. He probably should not have been put on air so quickly. He was sad about his friend. But in the thirst for instant reaction none of us questioned it at the time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kobe Bryant in action for the Lakers in 2016. Photograph: Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports

On their excellent Stadio podcast, Musa Okwonga and Ryan Hunn discussed Bryant only hours after he died. They articulated perfectly how the death of a sporting icon can have such an impact on us. As Hunn explained: “You are dealing with an individual who has given a huge amount of people, Lakers fans, probably some of the greatest experiences of their life.”

However trite it sounds, if I look back at my most euphoric experiences, many of them are sporting. And if those idols – who seem in some way immortal – aren’t here any more, it makes us think of our own lives. It triggers memories and fears. Those cliched hashtags on Twitter and Instagram – do the important things, tell people you love how you feel, focus on the positive – are probably right.

Yet Bryant’s life did not just happen on the court. And this is where it is complicated. In the hours after his death the Washington Post’s national reporter on its breaking political news team, Felicia Sonmez, tweeted about his rape case that was dismissed before trial in 2004, Bryant’s subsequent apology to his accuser and his settling of her civil case.

Sonmez linked to the Daily Beast’s report of 2016 entitled “The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession”. It makes for difficult reading. Sonmez got a tirade of threats and abuse. Her address was posted online. She was suspended by her paper and, following a separate backlash, was reinstated.

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It’s hard to tell if the hours after his passing are the right time to bring it up. But if not then, when? Today? In six months? As Okwonga said on Stadio “The grim parts of his legacy will I think in some minds be shielded by the amazing stuff he did on the court and we need to navigate all of it in time … When we consider the fullness of his legacy we look at all that he was.”

We forgive those we love more than others – our sporting heroes, our family, our friends. The reality of Bryant – like many others – is far more complex. His death is tragic. People who love him need time and space to process – the two things traditional and social media don’t give you.