Nurse who put through Today Network prank Royal call ‘has committed suicide’

Broadcasting comes with an incredible amount of responsibility. That is why it is licensed. Reckless use of a licence usually incurs a penalty or in the worst circumstances, revocation.

Let’s see if GET UP are as militant about this as they were about Jones/2GB recently. For mine, this is actually something worth getting angry about.

Awful, just awful.

So what does a radio station have to do to have it’s license revoked? Pull the trigger?

Horrible, and terribly sad.

I am sick of this station being a law unto itself. ENOUGH!

Not sure this precise outcome could have been foreseen.

But it was never going to end up well for whoever answered the phone with such a highly charged situation.

Sack the DJs, fire the producers, restructure the management. Anything less after the repeated behavior of 2day FM is a cop out. If they don’t change the management, who obviously condone and by their actions/inactions encourage such behavior, then revoke their license. We don’t need these “feral” business models.

Their Facebook page has gone missing it seems (https://www.facebook.com/2dayfm)

Sorry, but nothing short of a massive, massive fine (donated to suicide prevention charities) and the loss of a couple of licenses will change Austereo’s approach to broadcasting. They just don’t get it.

Sacking the hosts wont achieve anything – sadly they were just doing what was expected of them, and they’d just be replaced by next young wannabes anyway.

Everything about this story is just terribly sad.

You’d think that after this many disasters Southern Cross might re-think their business model’s reliance on controversy. You’d think. But if Kyle can stay on the air, it seems unlikely they’ll make any substantive changes.

Prank phone calls are the play thing of 15-year-olds – most of us grow out of that sort of stupidity by the time we leave school. Australia’s commercial FM radio stations with their boofhead blokes and slapper shielas want to appeal to this kiddy demographic because they can make a dollar out of its free-spending ways and so they pull moronic stunts like this with the full sanction of their so called management – and then gloat about it. But this time it went tragically wrong – ooh, sorry, we didn’t mean for that to happen! It was just a bit of fun! This station needs a broom put through it from the top down or its licence should be withdrawn.

Given SCA had lawyers check the audio prior to releasing it would suggest they had concerns early on. I suppose we’ll find out now how real those concerns were.

The opinion piece by Tim Burrows holds true for 99% except for one fact. This was a per-conceived, planned event by the station and staff of the show. While “blood on their hands” is a strong label, the sentiment is correct – they are responsible.

They and the production team are ground zero.

When you are part of a company that has, in my opinion, a puerile and self centered “star”, the urge to go one better much be enormous.

Unfortunately for all concerned – they have.

just horrific in every way. horrible.

easy to jump on our high horses about the radio station but we’ve all laughed at pranks.

We all thought it was brilliant when the Chaser got a Osama dress up through security at G8 but would the Chaser guys deserve to be banned for life if one of the soldiers on security detail committed suicide?

not saying it’s right and not saying there shouldn’t be consequences but if we go heavy on these guys, the logical implication is that we have to ban all pranks of all kinds all of the time if there is the minutest possibility that one of the ‘victims’ takes it badly.

not sure we want to live in that world….despite the fact that of course this is horribly tragic.

(pretty crappy prank anyway)

Pitchforks Away!

The act and the outcome are not connected: no one could have foreseen that a prank phone call victim would kill herself, and the prank itself was just good fun. I can’t really see what they did wrong: people kill themselves every day over a range of issues, we can’t ban everything.

So this girl commited suicide over a prank call? I’m sorry but there was obviously something else going on. This is ridiculous.

No one could have foreseen this. It is a terrible tragedy.

The time has come when we can have an open season on journalists. These people need to be culled. What a filthy radio station where such actions would be condoned by both management and their lawyers. Take the presenters off air for good.
Alan

If I was a client, I would not be spending a cent on Austereo.

Way to risky, and I’ll be advising all my clients of that on Monday.

@sam depression is rarely caused by one incident, even if there were other things going on in her life, Jacintha hardly needed the fallout from this prank. Assuming it was suicide, the prank had to be a contributing factor.

That’s right @Patrick, it’s all good fun, until someone gets hurt.

Be nice, don’t lie.

How can anyone blame Michael Christian and Mel Greig for a ridiculously extreme overreaction to a mild prank call?

I find this incredibly sad for many reasons, the first being that two people are going to be crucified over something that was intended to be silly and simple fun, even if immature. I’m sure everyone at the show was expecting to be told to “p*ss off” then the phone was answered.

The second is that over a prank call (where her involement was two words) someone has deeemed that moment more important than the rest of their life with their husband and two young children.

It’s a sad state of affairs all round.

NOTHING FUNNY at all about this tragedy, never under estimate the power of words and deeds. Also, the DJ’s have not apologised as yet, they are not completely to blame but they did have a hand in this stupidity and should acknowledge it, dont be cowards as well as stupid !

This 2dayfm controversy is insane. While the link between the station and the suicide exists, it is not their fault. Just like the lie detector controversy, this isn’t the stations fault. I’ll happily back protest when it’s reasonable, but both are not. In the lie detector controversy especially, the station acted properly. In this case, nobody in the world would’ve seen these consequences as a possibility. While they should be sorry, they aren’t resposible.

From the article:

Shattered: Hospital chief executive John Lofthouse spoke of their pain and sadness at the news of Jacintha’s death – and clearly linked it to the hoax call she took from the Australian DJs

If the nurse had been suffering from some pre-disposed condition, surely, being a nurse and working in a hospital, the hospital would know about it.

The British health system is far more stringent than our own, so let’s all not try to be mental health experts on this.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....z2EQaMrCJc

Let me guess. More policies and more ‘training’. They treat the regulators like a joke.
They don’t deserve to have a license. They are not fit and proper people to be using public airwaves.

@brutally honest

Are you serious? You think because she was a nurse who worked in a hospital there’s no way she could have had pre-existing mental health issues? Quite naive don’t you think?

Everyone needs to get off their high horse. The prank may have been immature but this is the mindset of their target audience. The DJS were simply doing their job, and could never have believed their ridiculously fake accents would have got them as far as it did.

For everyone called for the station to lose their licence, there aren’t too many radio stations that haven’t done prank calls, and as far as prank calls go this one was pretty tame. Should every other station lose their licence too?

@TVC
That’s an interesting variation on the Eichmann Defence.

And I’m failing to see where the “prank” was in this call. What was the “picture of success” from this exercise?

At best, it was attempting (and succeeding) in gaining access to the private information of a sick, pregnant woman through deception. This subterfuge caused the suicide of another woman.

Are you really trying to defend this?

The DJs are likely paying a heavy personal price and will continue to do so for years to come. It’s the management culture at SCA that repeatedly enables and endorses such idiocy that needs to be held accountable.

A modern day witch hunt.

Prank calls have been around for 30 years or and started overseas. This is a tragedy, normally you would have been hung up on in seconds.

Social media users seem to be campaigning to outlaw prank calls or provide mandatory counselling services to all callers. Seems pretty silly.

I want to know what the hell is wrong with the Australian media on this. Around the world people seem to agree that there is at least some responsibility to the DJs for this, but in AU I keep seeing lines that essentially read “It wasn’t their fault because there was no malice.” ???? Seriously? Do you say that too when a drunk driver runs a kid over? Hey, no malice, just trying to get home from that party…

Hang on a second folks, this is a horrible tragedy no question but has anyone actually shown a link between the poor woman’s small part in a prank call and her terrible decision to end her own life a few days later?

Do we know what else was going on in her life? What suffering or triggering influences she endured? What happened in the days after the prank?

We should not blame anybody until we know for sure who might be at fault.

BTW – I cannot stand 2Day, too childish by far for my taste but I think its wrong to just jump to a conclusion that the DJ’s caused this tragedy. We simply don’t know what else went on…

People keep saying “It’s not their fault” . Do they think the nurse would have committed suicide if they had not done this? Cause and effect. I understood that under the Telecommunications Act you have to inform someone in advance if you’re recording a telephone call. Did our two DJ’s do this? And if the Austereo lawyers vetted the stunt, did they take account of the law? I see they are now blaming the hospital for its own procedures. Talk about fanning the flames. Who’s Sandy Kaye anyway?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....nurse.html

We have choices: just don’t listen to them, refuse to switch them on. By listening to them, you participate in their ongoing practice of cynicism and cruelty. By listening to them you invite them to ‘push the envelope’. The real tragedy here is a network that demanded more and more sensation from their announcers. Comedy is a great weapon and an appropriate assault when it goes against pretention and posturing and reveals it for what it is. But this was cheap and nasty in its concept and resulted in lazy bullying.
The need to grab attention by sinking beyond the lowest common denominator is ever present. Comedy is in the same category as horror movies. . the death of suspense has resulted in a constant use of shock and repulsion. Brave New World eh!!

I still find it hard to understand why anyone (DJ, producers, average person on the street) would think prank calling a hospital is funny! It is a place where people who are sick and need treatment beyond what is available from GP’s go to. That’s what gets to me most about this whole thing. Surely media boundaries would consider some places off limits.

Surely this is not the first time a prank like this has been played on an unsuspecting individual. the same people who are condemning the two radio hosts have laughed at the Chaser team whom I thought was not funny, Matt Tilleys gotcha calls on foxfm Melbourne. People please shift your thinking and be a bit more matured in outlook. How many times has this been done? Just because it went wrong is no reason to say the action itself was wrong. It has been going on for years.

And this is exactly why suicide and suicide prevention need to be more thoroughly dealt with by the education system.

It shocks me that incredibly close-minded people can seriously think that the prank phone call was the catalyst for the death of the nurse in question. That is a horribly childish perception of suicide. Given that we know next to nothing about her mental state and her life in general, it is just as easy to say that she had this whole thing planned already and prank or no prank it was going to happen. The path to suicide isn’t usually as short as three days after a prank call.

Grow up guys, seriously.