To feel sorry for the Australian DJs?

[andapartridgeinaRowantree]

Obviously more sorry for the nurse's family. I wonder how long she was having suicidal thoughts for? I can't think this could have been the only cause,

But these pranks have been going on for such a long time and those DJs could not have predicted such a result and are going to have to live with it for the rest of their lives.

It's such a tragedy and I feel very sad for all concerned.

No don't feel sorry for them, they will get over it, poor lambs.

Agent I definitely think that listeners have some culpability in this too.

I think they could have handled it differently. but no, I don't want more tragedy out of this. they will have to live with it the rest of their lives.

AgentZigzag 'They're going to reflect on this with regret until the day they die themselves.' Good, they should do - perhaps they will grow the fuck up and realise that hurting people isn't fun and can cause all sorts of shit to happen.

Yes, their listeners deserve some of the responsibility.

I used to listen to 2Day FM a good 10 years ago, it was a great 'young' fun station. On my return to Sydney in 2010 I of course went straight back to my usual station in the car.

I lasted about a week before I realised just how bad it had gotten.

Anyone who listened and laughed needs to have a good hard look at themselves. What kind of people are they?

This wasn't a prank on the Royals it was a prank on a Nurse.

I don't feel sorry for them at all.
It's like saying 'Oh I feel sorry for the Sun after they got rapped for tapping Millie Dowler's phone''
It's just nasty exploitative journalism, they didn't dupe a 'Royal', they duped a nurse who, whatever her mental being, reached the last straw and killed herself.
I hope that remains in their minds forever.

My sympathy is limited too Raven, it's more on a human level rather than a personal level for them.

In the same way I'd feel sorry for a murderer who'd had an abusive childhood IYSWIM?

And Sandilands is still in their employ, he is still on the fucking air.

I actually do.

As people have said already, the nurse was subject to huge public criticism over the prank, and then killed herself.

If these two DJs kill themselves now because of the public shame they've suffered, who will be to blame? Themselves?

Or the same huge public who hugely publicly criticised the nurse who killed herself?

Or is the whole issue of apportioning blame in situations like these a completely bloody ridiculous one?

If you answered C, congratulations! You score 100 points. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of people commenting on this will never have had to deal with the immediate aftermath of someone they've recently interacted with committing suicide. Let me assure you all that it isn't brilliant.

The reason I'm particularly angered by this is I suspect they won't really be upset or haunted by this at all.

Oh, they'll realise some self-pitying statement expressing regret and shock and blah blah blah, but inside I'm suspect they are the kind of self-centred bastards who will be chiefly worried about the effect this will have on their own careers, and secondarily pissed off that nobody finds their deliberate cruelty "funny" any more.

I think everybody concerned about their well being is giving them too much credit. If they were concerned about their victims they wouldn't have exposed them to international ridicule.

They were testing the borders of what makes something funny, which is what should happen.

But they seem to have lost sight of their humanity when they were touting for world wide media exposure/huge ratings.

I'm only thinking out loud Morloth, so not slagging the Aussies or anything, but do you think the 'jokey' relationship we have together as countries (which sometimes is played as a joke but actually deadly serious (as I've found with some of my Welsh rellies)), and the republican/royalist camps, may have made this seem more acceptable to the radio station and what they thought their listeners would like? (bit of a long question, sorry )

I don't think that, unless you work in healthcare, you have much appreciation of the damage a breach of confidentiality can do. This poor woman will have felt guilty for the sake of her patients, humiliated and terrified for her future.

I cannot see any excuse at all for the network and DJs bragging about this stupid prank even after her death. Shame on them.

Holy cow, I've just read Whistlingwaves' post. That made me feel sick. And that guy is still on air how??!

People want to try and make sense of what's happened though Holdme.

Not just because they want to get their head round something which resonates with them personally, but so official procedures can be put in place so shit like this doesn't happen again.

If you can pinpoint who is responsible, you can hold them accountable and punish them accordingly.

Which is the whole premise of the criminal justice system isn't it?

i think it's an absolute tragedy. but how would anyone turn down/refuse to put through a phone call from someone who sounds exactly like the queen??

just horrendously awful. i had to ring a celebs son once on orders from my boss. hospital said they would not release details. i said i didn't care - it was my bosses friends son, nothing to do with me. which was fine by me. but how would someone deal with a phone call from the queen?? where would you draw the line. awful.

As an Australian I don't mind a good poke at the Royals - they have power, they can take it and the whole 'Royal' thing is IMO ridiculous.

But just a tiny moment's thought would have made them realise that the Royals were never going to be the ones who wore any shit for this.

See, if you want to push the boundaries of humour, you should do it with yourself and other consenting comedians. Not some poor woman on the other side of the world trying to do her job without the slightest suspicion she's about to become a YouTube hit.

The reason sites remained up for a fair while after news of her death became public was because of the time difference - it broke in mid-afternoon, which is the middle of the night over there. Sure, the news/TV/radio industry is a 24/7 operation, but I don't think everyone connected with this farrago would have been aware of it soon enough to act promptly. At least some people would have been asleep.

This explanation will be unsatisfactory to a lot of people, but I really don't think those sites remained up out of some kind of desire to add insult to injury.

I don't think that assigning blame - 80% to the station, 15.3% to the hospital 2.6% to the listeners - is possible or even helpful.

What I would love to see happen is growing recognition that publicly humiliating people in the age of the Internet is not funny, but cruel, nasty, and bullying. I would like to see people/audiences turned off by it and stations and networks consider it beyond the pale.

I cannot believe the station is still employing this Sandliands man. The station have a lot to answer for.

Totally agree, the Royals were not the butt of this 'joke'. The nursing staff were.

I totally agree HoldMe, they got it very, very wrong.

I was thinking about why fonejacker is funny, and it's because the joke is completely on the character and not the person on the other end.

People who think it's funny to have a joke at other peoples expense, to humiliate and degrade them in front of other people, are cunts for not knowing it's wrong.

But factor in the type of radio station it was hungry for ratings, what some people in Aus think is OK (and in this country too), the queen and the biggest story on the day she went into hospital, and it's pretty explosive.

It wasn't even a Live call. There was still time after it had happened for someone with an ounce of common sense to have said 'actually, we could get this woman into a lot of trouble, lets not'.

I think this whols story stinks.

You can get the hospital switchboard number from their website. It is a fairly small private hospital, no A&E department, just surgical and diagnostic. A switchboard is only manned by receptionists in the daytime. The call came in at 5.30am UK time and the nurses answer the switchboard on the much quieter night shift.....Jacinda answered the main switchboard and transferred the call to the duty nurse.
What I don't understand is that Jacinda had worked there for 4 years and the royals are regulars. Why why why would she think that Brenda would call at 5.30am? I daresay the daytime receptionists know that Brenda would get her private secretary to call hospitals to enquire about family.

According to reports Jacinda was proud to work at a hospital that looked after the The Family, I can only deduce that in the heat of the moment she got a bit awestruck and agreed to transfer the call thinking it really was the queen.

But WHY top herself? We are told that she was being supported by the hospital for her "mistake" so how can someone be that distraught to kill themselves, she didn't reveal any confidential information at all, just transferred the call.

There has to be something more to this story.

Absolutely awful and feel for her family.

I read that the lady did not speak good English, goes someway towards explaining why she fell for the "prank" although I haven't heard the tapes to know this.

How guilty and humiliated she must have felt. It's heartbreaking.