Is it just me or do these seem like two totally different situations? One is a journalist assigned to report on a repairman scam and the other is two fratty delinquents who think making people feel like shit is funny.
The difference is that as far as we know Ms. Saldanha was a caring woman who wanted to do what was right and good while the DJs are the type of people who think phone pranks are an acceptable form of humor.
I don’t think making someone feel like shit was really an objective though (indeed that arguably is a difference between the two stories. If you’re writing an expose on a dodgy trader you’re probably conscious that he’s going to be upset by it).
Had this been just a “regular” celeb, it wouldn’t have got much media coverage and we probably wouldn’t have the awful result we have. It would have made a few aussies laugh, a bit of promotion for the station, that’s the end of it.
I’m not defending prank phone calls – I’ve never found them funny. But looking at this in hindsight and implying that they had wicked motives, I just don’t see it.
People are pissed at the djs because they just keep reiterating the company line, “Suicide could not have been foreseen!” Which while true, doesn’t negate that very negative career consequences were likely, and easily predictable, for whomever they tricked. No, they could not have known if she was in a delicate state emotionally. But when you roll the dice with other people’s careers you run the risk of someone taking it harder than you might think.
Nut up and own it, quit with the weaseling, it’s making them look worse everytime they open their mouths.
I am still waiting to hear if purposely circumventing protocol to obtain someone’s private medical records, is a crime in Auss., or not. And does, “we called five times but couldn’t get through” actually amount to legal consent or not?
I don’t honestly think there is much you can do to these two dj’s if it is legal consent, and getting someone else’s medical records isn’t a crime. Plus, I honestly can’t imagine a worse punishment than having to live with this the rest of your life.
Blaming the victim, the British press, and saying “I don’t think we actually broke any laws!”, ‘It was about our silly accents’, ‘we didn’t know it would work’, etc, isn’t doing them any good, they should stop that shit, and own up like adults.
Just admit it was a bad idea, that it should have been thought through further.
Let’s just say that the ire people here have for telemarketers is roughly how I feel about phone prankers.
Did you mean to quote me there? I was talking about people hounding the DJs and actually saying that they should kill themselves too. Your post makes it sound as though you agree, and I doubt that.
And meanwhile, the TV news is reporting that Princess Kate’s pregnancy vomiting* is back, although she is not hospitalized at this point.
I don’t agree that they should kill themselves, but I would not be averse to them living some sort of penitent’s life in the outback for a while. It’s all well and good that they’re apologetic now, but if they really were nice people, they wouldn’t have made the call in the first place. I’m pretty unsympathetic to their situations since I doubt they’re really sorry for anything except that everyone hates them now.
Poor Kate. All day morning sickness is a nightmare. I hope she doesn’t have to wind up on an IV for the entire pregnancy. I was on one off and on during the third trimester my first pregnancy for three weeks and it was very scary.
The pranksters did something stupid but it hardly deserves the massive opprobrium hurled their way.
Why would you doubt that they’re sorry the nurse died? Have they themselves even made any statements about it? Unless they’ve says something like “tough shit,” it’s reasonable to expect that they feel terrible that their actions played a part in someone’s death.
I mean, does anyone really think that they should have known death was a likely outcome of their call?
This is true for humans, but we’re talking about people who make prank phone calls. The evidence is against them that they have feelings.
I think the DJs were humans.
Actually they have made public statements and are clearly very contrite and apologetic. I do believe the woman DJ’s tears were genuine. I don’t see why people doubt that the DJ’s are very upset and sorry over a prank that went wrong.
Part of the problem is that there is a large segment of people who think pranks and practical jokes are funny, and another large segment who think they are not funny but rather humiliating or painful or [insert negative emotional reaction of your choice]. No, there is no way the DJ’s could have known in advance the nurse was that fragile mentally but there certainly ARE such people out there and when you’re pranking random strangers running across one isn’t impossible. Even when death doesn’t occur, the loss of a job or career, which is another possible outcome of some of these prank call type stunts, is far less funny to the victim than to onlookers. What would be just compensation if the nurse had been fired over this? How long does it take to recover a reputation after a widely publicized prank, if that is even possible?
The ones doing the pranking/punking/pwning or whatever you call it find it hilarious and call those who don’t spoilsports and bad sports or humorless… but why should the ones profiting from pranks at the expense of others be the ones to make that determination? They seem oblivious to the harm, real or potential, that they cause. It’s high time someone is called to account for this sort of thing although I wish it had been over something less serious and final than suicide.
What they did is no less then many in the news business, fishing for information.
The one who did something stupid was the nurse, killing herself over a hubbub that will have disappeared in two weeks (if she wasn’t killed and made to look like a suicide that is da daa da dum).
But there are laws about how people can lose their jobs in the uk. The only way she could have lost her job was by doing something against the terms of her employment, and, since this was the nurse who transferred the call and didn’t even give out any information at all, there was no way she would have lost her job.
If you provoke someone into doing something illegal/against their terms of employment, then the person who did the illegal/etc thing is just as culpable.
But neither nurse actually did that. The DJs didn’t actually make the nurses do anything wrong. The nurse who connected the call could not possibly have been charged in any way. So it’s a bit weird that so many people are saying they did something that they knew could get her sacked; they didn’t.
I’m not saying they did something they knew could get her sacked. They did something that they knew, at the least, was going to make someone feel like an idiot and then went ahead and did it anyway. Sob in interviews all you want, it’s our actions that determine who we are, not our regrets.
Making someone feel like an idiot is not usually going to lead to their deaths. Making someone feel like they’re not even human has a higher likelihood of that, though.
International pranking runs into the problem that laws differ from place to place. The nurse’s job might have been safe in the UK (though I’m not convinced that would have saved her from unofficial punishment), but in the the US yes, she most certainly could lose her job over something like that, even if confidential information wasn’t given out, because there are far fewer job protections in the US.
Do these pranksters even stop to think that even if it’s legal where they are it might have greater consequences where the victim lives/works?
That’s just bizarre. I can’t imagine the nurses giving their consent in the first place and I can’t imagine the station just sitting on the recording if consent was refused either.
I thought we’re not responsible for other people’s actions.
The “difference” is immaterial. The article is a firsthand account of the emotional turmoil of someone who publicly humiliated someone and felt responsible when they committed suicide a few days later. The circumstances leading up to the incident are not the story.
Also, the show the journalist worked on is just as gutter and low-brow as the radio station but in a different field. They continue to air “exposé” stories to this day despite that man’s suicide.