The two Aussie radio DJs who pulled the prank that caused a UK nurse to kill herself are in bad shape, it is reported. Many are calling for harsh punishment. This, however, seems to me to be the most sensible reaction:
Anger over Mel Greig & Michael Christian understandable. But their mistake will haunt them for life. No need for pitchforks or witch hunts.
— Chas Newkey-Burden (@AllThatChas) December 7, 2012
MBrown says: These radio DJs never thought they’d get past the receptionist. I suspect they were completely shocked that they were given access, and were unable to think quickly enough about the repercussions of succeeding in getting information. Once they got through, I’m guessing they were too shell-shocked to quickly think to themselves “Oh, crap – now we’re getting in too deep… time to pull the plug.”
This is terribly tragic, but I don’t think that they can be held morally responsible (much less legally) for the suicide. There simply is no plausible way to think that such a call would reasonably end up in a suicide. It’s just a terrible, random tragedy. These things do happen, sometimes.
So yes, indeed they will have to live with this on their conscience. That is sufficient.
Lord Karth says: Sometimes stupidity is a crime that generates its own punishment.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
thehova says: Why on earth should they be punished?!?
Responsibility lies with the nurse and the hospital for not training their staff better. This is absurd.
Richard Johnson says: I think there is a simple punishment for this duo. Every year on the anniversary of the death of their unfortunate victim, they should be required to donate $1 to a reputable charity in her name. The donation must be made in person at the local office of said charity, not mailed, or transfered by electronic means. They must take themselves down to the office, on the anniversary day of her death (or the closest business day, if it falls on the weekend) and hand over the $1.
$1, every year, for the rest of their lives.
B. Minich says: I just heard them being interviewed. They sounded absolutely devastated.
thehova says: I spoke to my father about this, who is a hopsital administrator. He noted that he would never step foot in that hospital. They appear to be more interested in playing the public relations game and blaming the DJ’s than addressing their errors and policies.
Charles Cosimano says: Don’t be so sure. I know people who would be laughing their heads off if they did that and someone committed suicide.
K H Acton says: Where is the anger at the hospital reception service? In my state you can’t get through the little old lady who mans the phone unless you know the patient’s full name and favorite colour, and I’m a pastor.
EngineerScotty says: Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King remains the definitive work on this subject.
The irony is that it was the papers that are now wailing about how dreadful these presenters are, and demanding to know the names of the producers who authorised their stunt, who first made a big deal out of the prank and ensured that a small administrative error became an international story. Can’t they take responsibility, like, ever?
K. W. Jeter says: The network’s chief executive stated that the network was “very confident that we haven’t done anything illegal.”
Well, that’s kind of the problem. There actually are standards in the Australian broadcasting industry, just as elsewhere, and the station violated them by airing the tape of the prank.
the station went ahead and broadcast the prank call given that Australian guidelines state clearly that “a station must not broadcast the words of an identifiable person unless they have been informed in advance that the recording may go to air.” As The Guardian explains: “If someone is unaware they are being recorded, the interviewee must grant consent for it to be played, prior to anything being broadcast.”
Shouldn’t the regulations be enforced, if only to prevent others from taking a blithe attitude about obeying them?
Mike says: If you were pranked by phone,would you take your own life? It might have been a dumb thing, but clearly the woman had to have had issues going on apart from anything to do with a prank call.
Church Lady says: It wasn’t a mistake. Everything they did was deliberate. The consequences weren’t foreseen, but the actions were. The humiliation was intentional, for the sake of comedy ratings. They just didn’t grasp that some people take life, and their jobs, seriously.
CharleyCarp says: A pastor is not the Queen of England.
Roland de Chanson says: The ill-starred outcome of this prank was unforeseeable. As painful as suicide is to the family the perpetrator leaves behind to grieve and place blame, the ultimate responsibility for the sin and crime of suicide rests with the suicide himself.
This mother of two children did not commit suicide because of this prank. Evidently, from published reports, she merely passed the call through to another nurse who gave out unauthorized information. That nurse is alive still and has her job still; her family has her still. What other events of this poor woman’s life prepared the stage for this drama of self-murder? Whatever they are, you will probably never read about them in the press; the press has too much at stake in scapegoating the DJ’s and making the sinner a victim.
The woman who killed herself is reported to have been a Catholic. In bygone days, in days more rational and more faithful, she would not have been permitted burial in consecrated ground. As a Catholic dramatist has written:
Is she to be buried in Christian burial that willfully seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee, she is … the crowner hath sat on her and finds it Christian burial.
Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial.
Thankfully, we are all gentlefolk today and some modicum of human mercy prevails over the old dura lex.
Whether Divine Mercy has prevailed over Divine Justice, only the dead woman can tell now.
Reader says: There simply is no plausible way to think that such a call would reasonably end up in a suicide. It’s just a terrible, random tragedy. These things do happen, sometimes.
The eggshell skull rule rule:
“The term implies that if a person had a skull as delicate as that of the shell of an egg, and a tortfeasor who was unaware of the condition injured that person’s head, causing the skull unexpectedly to break, the defendant would be held liable for all damages resulting from the wrongful contact, even if the tortfeasor did not intend to cause such a severe injury.”
Carol says: Maybe if the press weren’t treating this pregnancy as if it were the Second Coming, this never would have happened.
David J. White says: The two Aussie radio DJs who pulled the prank that caused a UK nurse to kill herself
Has it in fact been definitively established that 1) the nurse took her own life, and 2) it was due to the prank?
AndrewH says: Where is the anger at the hospital reception service?
I believe the nurse who committed suicide was the one who answered the phone and forwarded the call as she was filling in for someone else. IOW this wasn’t what she was trained to do so she might not have understood the rules.
Hopefully this will make pranksters in future think about the potential consequences of their actions. I’ve heard of divorces, heart attacks, firings and even murder resulting from pranks. Unfortunately, as long as businesses can make money from such low brow “entertainment” they’ll keep doing it.
J says: If you were pranked by phone,would you take your own life? It might have been a dumb thing, but clearly the woman had to have had issues going on apart from anything to do with a prank call.
Exactly.
The eggshell skull rule rule:
The people being pranked weren’t a random public gathering or the inmates of an insane asylum. It was some front line hospital staff. Of whom it is quite fairly demanded that they not be fragile, at least not much of the time.
Getting lied to or out of kindness being gullible or seemingly gullible to a suggestion from which no real harm to anyone arises is a routine occurrence in hospital staff work. Most nurses develop very acute b.s. detectors. And no individual person is expected to be perfect about it in my experience in hospital settings- most significant decisions involve at least two people, at least one of whom usually catches on to the con.
I think the second nurse, who gave the pranksters the medical information despite their obvious falsetto voices, was the one who was more gullible and more culpable. She seems alive and well.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says: the ultimate responsibility for the sin and crime of suicide rests with the suicide himself.
The mind is a tricky thing, and frankly I often wonder how much free will we have versus how often we are observers of a story we’re creating about ourselves.
The root of my skepticism lies with the effectiveness of certain psychiatric medications (and SSRI’s in particular) to alter behaviors. OCD for example can cause a person to waste hours of time repeating behaviors that seem outside their control to stop. Yet they can gain that control with medication. But paradoxically these same drugs can increase the probability of someone to commit suicide as well.
Suicide is such an abnormal act it possible that their brain was just plain broken in some manner that they lacked control over.
alkali says: The eggshell skull rule is a legal precept which dictates in civil cases, a liable defendant won’t be permitted to limit the share of the damage he or she actually caused to that which was reasonably foreseeable. As such, it’s a rule intended to simplify civil litigation — not a moral principle, but more in the nature of a rule of thumb.
Andrea says: People do not commit suicide over something like this unless there is a lot else wrong with their lives. It was a stupid stunt but I wouldn’t blame these two idiots for the nurse’s choice to kill herself. I suspect there were other things going on there — severe depression, most likely.
astorian says: Years ago Peter Jennings was scammed on the air by a Howard Stern fan who strung him along with a cock and bull story about being OJ Simpson’s neighbor. The whole call was a setup for a Bahama Booey joke.
Did Peter Jennings kill himself?
Agreed. I don’t understand why people are calling for their heads. Their plan of attack was to call in and say “I’m the Queen of England, tell me how Kate is.” They weren’t expecting to be taken seriously–they were expecting to waste the time of the hospital’s phone operators. There was about zero chance that they would get through. And even if they did, how could they expect that the operator would be so distraught by her mistake (which, forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, seems like a pretty dumb mistake to me) that she’d kill herself?