The death threats and other predictable nastiness being hurled at the DJs by totally random members of the tweeting/facebooking/commenting public is, IMO, far more disturbing than the prank itself. Sure, it was a dick move, but I don’t think anyeone could’ve ever reasonably foreseen suicide out of it. (And even they were precognizant, how does that give folks who are complete strangers to both the “victim” and the “perpetrators” the right to threaten harm against them?)
People are weird. Every day another thing happens to make me wonder if I’m not some alien changeling from Alpha Centauri.
Anyway, my sympathies are with the nurse’s family.
I sympathize with the nurse’s family, but someone who commits suicide over something this stupid wasn’t 100% healthy to start with. It’s very sad that she didn’t get the help she needed to not be this close to the edge.
If you’re going through a rough patch in your life, the last thing you want is to find yourself the butt of a stupid joke that gets you in trouble at work.
Well, then I pit the faceless middle manager who really enjoys the fact that they have power over something in their life, even if all they can control is a couple of hospital employees.
Sorry, I may be projecting because I’ve suffered at the hands of That Type. Their kids and spouse don’t respect them, so they take it out on anyone who breaks A Rule.
I generally can get behind pranks and abhor vandalism. So what’s the difference? Consequence, or rather easily anticipated consequences. So let’s go through this step by step.
Calling at 5AM? Ok, now we’re into “Being a dick” land. If you’re going to embarrass a random stranger, you have to provide at least a semblance of a safety net, a la Candid Camera. In other words, talk with them after the prank and get their permission.
I don’t think I’d pin responsibility for the suicide on the DJs though. That’s not reasonably anticipated. Greig asked to speak to “my granddaughter Kate”. Saldanha thought she was speaking to the Queen and told Greig: “Oh yes, just hold on ma’am”. She then put the call through to a duty nurse, who divulged intimate medical details about the duchess. Violation of medical privacy, even of a celebrity? That crosses a line. You better have good reason for doing that. Which they did not. So I wouldn’t call this a harmless prank, even without the suicide.
Oh. Did we learn anything from this prank? Like we do from the work of Joey Scaggs and the Yes men? No. Not really. The DJs deserve punishment.
The biggest mistake, IMHO, was in airing the call. For one of the DJs, it was only his second day on air, presumably as part of a fill-in gig while the ever-obnoxious Kyle and Jackie O. are on holidays.
I understand that the DJs were taken aback by how far they got–I can’t blame them for simply winging it at that point. It was really management’s fault in not nixing its airing, despite clearance from the legal team.
I too think that someone at that hospital chewed her and her colleague out royally (and maybe she deserved it, even if she did just hand the phone over to another nurse), and that was the straw that broke her back (on top of the prank being at her expense). I don’t feel that sorry for people who kill themselves (because I really don’t think they would often want to you to feel sorry for them), really, but I do feel pretty bad for her family and children.
It clearly was a stupid prank that got further than they thought it would. Abysmal fake accents and stupid corgi references are not the hallmark of a planned and serious attempt to gain confidential information about a member of the royal family. They clearly thought they’d be busted almost immediately and thought it would be a giggle to play the audio of them being told off and the phone being hung up. When things went as far as they did, and the nurse divulged confidential information to them, they could have called it off. While the station’s legal advisers were reviewing the call and giving permission for it to air they could have heavily edited it and added editorial comment to say the nurse updated them on Kate’s condition without being so crass as to air it in full. They could have still had the giggles and the gotcha without airing the whole conversation. Even the Chaser team called a halt to their UN Summit prank when they accidentally crossed into the restricted zone with a fake cavalcade, bogus security passes and a member of their team dressed as Osama Bin Laden.
But 2dayFM is also the home of the execrable Kyle Sandilands, so perhaps they’re so used to the sound of scraping on the bottom of the barrel that they don’t even notice it anymore.
I think they most certainly bear a huge responsibility. Blameless medical staff working under what must have been intense media pressure shouldn’t have to worry about fending off idiotic and pointless prank calls from humour-free DJ’s (I’m fairly sure that the “humour-free” description is redundant there).
What did they think was going to happen? What they wanted to happen was exactly what did happen, they fooled people in order to get them to spill info and gossip. So they got what they wanted and either didn’t stop for a second to think of how this would effect those who were fooled, or didn’t care. Either way they deserve all the bad things that are coming their way, sackings all round for a start and I hear that sponsors are pulling their business…good. I hope the station fails totally.
The station is not going to fail: it is part of Southern Cross Austereo, a large national multi-station broadcasting group. It’s like suggesting one Clear Channel station may go under.
Just like the popular UK tabloid “The news of the World” couldn’t fail because it was part of Murdoch’s News International?
When a brand becomes particularly toxic it can certainly be terminated.
drewtoo99, you’re right. The hospital may not have officially disciplined her, but someone might very well have reamed her out, and added a warning that she would unofficially be on very thin ice from here on in, regardless of what TPTB decided. And she might have been getting a hard time from other staff members.
I wondered about that from the start. I heard the audio (is it still on the net?). Would an English person really think that was the Queen? I’m American, so I don’t hear her voice regularly, but from what I have heard, it seems she has a very distinct tone to her voice, and a particular phrasing that’s several degrees above “posh”. The DJ didn’t sound like that at all. She also didn’t sound like an 86 year old woman. Now, I haven’t heard William’s voice much either, but he doesn’t strike me as sounding much different from other upper-crust guys his age. If the male DJ had called as the Duke of Cambridge, that might have been plausible, depending on he presented himself.
Second, would an English person really think that any of the Windsors would cold-call a hospital, or anywhere else? I imagine the Queen has layers and layers of people between herself and the public. It seems more likely that she would have some kind of underassistant place the call, confirm that it was the correct hospital/ward/doctor, and then transfer to someone higher in the food chain, like a secretary. If it was necessary for HM to get on the line, the secretary would then say “Her Majesty wishes to speak with you,” and transfer again. That’s how producers and studio execs do it. (I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious, but I think it’s the same situation: if they made all their calls themselves, they’d spend their entire lives on the phone.)
I guess some people are susceptible to being conned and some aren’t. Now I’m remembering that George H.W. Bush the Elder also once visited a kindergarten when he was President. And I saw the video of a boy asking him, “How do I know you’re really the President? How do I know you’re not some joker guy?” Apparently the lurking Secret Service guys were not an indicator, so Bush took out his wallet and showed the kid his driver’s license, a photo of Bar, and some other ID. The kid was convinced, but his asking is proof that even some five year olds can’t easily be fooled.
That’s pretty much it . “It is understood…” can also be used as shorthand for “reliable information which the reporter has acquired confidentially”, FWIW.
And as for the OP: While I don’t think the DJs could have directly foreseen a suicide would be the end result of the call, I do think they should have been reasonably able to forsee that someone on the other end of the phone would probably lose their job over it once the call went past the receptionist and should have hung up at that point. Of course, at that point they were in too far anyway - because even if they’d hung up, the message would get passed along that Her Majesty had called and things would just get problematic from there when a game of Royal Phone Tag ensued.
Either way, it’s a complicated situation. I do feel extremely sorry for the nurse and her family and my sympathies are with them.