Mod Note: See Post #71 Nurse in Kate radio prank takes her own life

Trick of the Tail

A little detail that you're missing: There was no phone operator on duty, the phones were on night service.

The now-deceased nurse answered the phone - as they all would do if one rings when passing, it's standard procedure there apparently. She was asked to put the caller through to 'My daughter-in-law Kate', the nurse said 'hold on a moment' and put her through to the dept Kate was in.

That was the limit of that nurse's involvement.

The nurse in the ward who answered gave all the info out to the unconvincing Queen and Charles impersonators.

The first nurse received the brunt of the media's attention for 'being so stupid' as to put the call through. The second nurse, who endured bad royal impersonations and a man barking like a dog in the background, got no pillory.

Yet the first nurse is dead.

True, there must be more to this - she must have had some problems of her own, but the hospital spectacularly failed to protect their staff and patients from unwarranted intrusion.

A.

RainyDay

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Your line of argument is moving inexorably towards "blame the victim".

No - the hospital is not the victim. The hospital is the supposedly professional body with professional staff getting paid to accommodate the patient in question, who should definitely have foreseen the risk of press inquiries and planned for that situation.

Trick of the Tail

P.B.: None of this would have happened if Kate had not married Wills. But it's not their fault, no more than its the DJs' faults.

Its disingenuous to suggest that they caused her death.

A.

Tombo2001

The line thats being put out by several Australians, the radio station, the DJs, some Aussie Politicians......and by some people here....that

"no-one could possibly have foreseen that this would happen".....

well why not......

if you had put this through a thought process:

we'll make this prank call to the hospital....

do we think the press will pick up on it England....? probably

do we think there will be uproar in the press over security? probably

do we think there would be an internal review in the hospital as a result? probably

could the people who facilitated a breach lose their jobs? maybe

who are the people that work in manual roles in hospitals? many are non-national staff, often on temporary work visas.

How do you think that person will feel after being at the centre of all this national media attention and potentially losing the work visa that they need to feed their family back home?.........

I dont think its that much of a leap of faith to say at the very least, this could have extremely distressing consequences. So I just dont buy it at all this notion of "no-one could have predicted".....

And its disingenuous to suggest otherwise. In other words, its a way of shirking responsibility. No-one is saying the aussies are completely responsible. But they are most definitely partly responsible.

withless

Have you never heard a prank call before?

You should watch The Simpsons. Its an animated show with lots of 'pop culture' references. One of the characters 'Bart' makes prank phone calls to another character 'Moe'. The show is highly regarded.

GSF

withless wrote: »

Have you never heard a prank call before?

You should watch The Simpsons. Its an animated show with lots of 'pop culture' references. One of the characters 'Bart' makes prank phone calls to another character 'Moe'. The show is highly regarded.

And there are 3 headed fish swimming in Lake Sprinfield, the town has been put under a glass dome, run by a corrupt mayor and has 3 police to cover the entire town. So are we to take everything in The Simpsons now as the benchmark?

P. Breathnach

alinton wrote: »

...
Its disingenuous to suggest that they caused her death.

I never made such a suggestion. I have held out against speculating on the cause of her death.

Trick of the Tail

You may not have done P.B., but many others have decided that the Aussies are directly responsible.

Many people and factors contributed to her death, mostly we don't know about. However in my opinion the Aussie presenters are among the least responsible.

A.

P. Breathnach

alinton wrote: »

...
Many people and factors contributed to her death...

You don't know that. It would be respectful not to comment on the cause of her death.

The matter of the making and broadcasting of the phone call can be considered without discussing Ms. Saldanha.

NIMAN

Watching the wall to wall coverage on British TV today, I can't help but think of how such a non-story has taken the world headlines.

Imho, there was something else happening in this woman's life. She wasn't even the one that gave out confidential information. All she did was answer a call and pass it through. Sorry if this sounds cruel, but if she thought she had done something that was so bad that she needed to end it all, then she was mentally not right.

The social media vigilantes have now turned on the DJs of course, as is the modern thing. For me they did nothing that was really that wrong. As a guy said on the Last Word tonight, radio shows have been doing crank calls for 40yrs, and this is probably the greatest over reaction to one ever. It wasn't even funny and was made amateurish and I am sure the station thought it was never going to work.

If the DJs are guilty of a serious crime, then imho we may as well go and ban comedy now. Some have said they are bullies, but thats nonsense. How did they bully this dead woman? They hardly spoke to her for any length of time. Surely Frankie Boyle would be guilty of far more serious crimes if this was the way of thinking?

Anyway, may she rest in peace. A waste of a life but one which I don't think the DJs are responsible for.

L.Jenkins

Serious Mod Warning: Guys a woman took her own life after a prank gone wrong. This topic needs to be discussed very sensitively without diagnosing her. If this takes the slightest hint of a nose dive it will be locked. So be warned.

More Music

P. Breathnach wrote: »

You don't know that. It would be respectful not to comment on the cause of her death.

Exactly. The phone call may have nothing to do with her death.

Trick of the Tail

But isn't that the point? The prank phone call is bring held up publicly as the cause of her death.

That is what I disagree with. I cannot see that it was, I cannot see why those presenters are culpable and I think it's disgraceful that they have been made to feel guilty.

A.

tbh

alinton wrote: »

But isn't that the point? The prank phone call is bring held up publicly as the cause of her death.

That is what I disagree with. I cannot see that it was, I cannot see why those presenters are culpable and I think it's disgraceful that they have been made to feel guilty.

A.

her husband said she died of shame. Nobody knows for sure why she killed herself, but I don't think it's a massive leap to assume that the prank was a major contributory factor.

withless

GSF wrote: »

And there are 3 headed fish swimming in Lake Sprinfield, the town has been put under a glass dome, run by a corrupt mayor and has 3 police to cover the entire town. So are we to take everything in The Simpsons now as the benchmark?

Should we blame The Simpsons for popularising prank calls?

I say yes. Ban this sick filth.

Tombo2001

alinton wrote: »

But isn't that the point? The prank phone call is bring held up publicly as the cause of her death.

That is what I disagree with. I cannot see that it was, I cannot see why those presenters are culpable and I think it's disgraceful that they have been made to feel guilty.

A.

Well if you are saying she killed herself, and that this wasnt the cause, then you are implying that she was going to kill herself anyway. That is the direct implication. Are you sure you are happy to imply that? Given that you know absolutely nothing about this woman, apart from the fact that she killed herself days after being the victim of a prank phone call that received massive and worldwide press attention as a security breach....

Btr

tbh wrote: »

As far as I remember, that involved Simon Young, who told a guy (details are fierce hazy in my head) that he had taken the slates off his roof and wouldn't be able to put them back until after Christmas. Yer man on the receiving end went bananas and hung up the phone before he could be told it was prank call, and rushed home.

In regards to this case - there are a couple of things that need to be taken into consideration.

The first question is: Who was the victim of the prank phone call? and the answer is, the two nurses that were featured. This wasn't a prank on Kate or Will - they didn't even know it was happening, and the fact that information was about Kate is incidental to the prank. The nurse wasn't even in a position to fight back - it's 5:30 in the morning and someone claiming to be the queen rings a hospital treating her grandaughter in law - chances are I wouldn't have risked MY job saying "eh, are you really the queen?"

Second question, kinda related to the first, is Who was the butt of the joke? The DJs said they were expecting to be hung up on straight away. Remember - this was a pre-record. Surely to god someone in there should have said "Ok, we got through, do we really still want to broadcast this?"

Because, by broadcasting it, what they said was "Look how dumb these two nurses were, that we could ring this hospital with these crazy accents, and trick them into thinking we were the queen"

Neither of the nurses were in on the joke. Neither of them, presumably, saw the funny side of it (no permission to broadcast was given by them). So the radio station should have said "You know what - they made an honest mistake, it didn't go the way we thought it would, so lets just bin it". Instead, they held those two nurses up to ridicule in the worlds media .

Now fair enough, the two DJs seem distraught and they couldn't really be expected to think that one of the nurses would kill herself, but what *did* they expect would happen to the two nurses? That they would be ashamed? Embarrassed? Humiliated? Would that have been ok?

I was not referring to the broadcaster you mentioned

GSF

withless wrote: »

Should we blame The Simpsons for popularising prank calls?

I say yes. Ban this sick filth.

There hasnt been a prank call in The Simpsons since the mid 1990's. Just shows how dated they are.

withless

Who gets upset at an old fashioned or 'dated' prank call?

GSF

withless wrote: »

Who gets upset at an old fashioned or 'dated' prank call?

Yup its up there with racism and mother in law jokes.

withless

Did you have a problem with prank calls before this particular one?

GSF

withless wrote: »

Did you have a problem with prank calls before this particular one?

I found them tediously unfunny for years. Heard one recently on some local station where the main "joke" was some guy mispronouncing wink as **** for several minutes to some girl answering the phone in a hotel somewhere.

This wasn't a prank call though. Prank calls have a pre planned script and generally are set up with friends, colleagues or family in advance. This was none of he above, this was more like a pretexting call used by journalists to obtain private data from phone co's,banks, etc

withless

You heard the ridiculous 'royal' accent the lady used? It may be 'terrible' but its so obviously a prank that if you thought for 2 seconds about it you would hang up.

This is what a prank call should be. Bababooey to you all.

GSF

withless wrote: »

You heard the ridiculous 'royal' accent the lady used? It may be 'terrible' but its so obviously a prank that if you thought for 2 seconds about it you would hang up.

And what if you are an Indian answering the phone as the lady was?

Could you correctly identify over the phone the voice of the Prime Minister of India if the tables were turned?

withless

Probably not.

I would do what exactly what she did and most people would do, when someone asks about the wife of the future king of England I would ignore protocol, ask no questions and put them straight through. Thats all anyone should be expected to do.

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Tombo2001 wrote: »

.......Given that you know absolutely nothing about this woman, apart from the fact that she killed herself days after being the victim of a prank phone call that received massive and worldwide press attention as a security breach....

Maybe we've hit on something here. It's the newspapers and incessant 24 hour news channels that actually caused her death. Anytime time she switched on her TV or passed a news stand she was seeing non stop coverage and scrutiny of her actions.

The prank could have passed off after the inital broadcast without much hype and publicity if the media hadn't put it and the nurse centre stage.

The hypocrisy of it. The rags and 24 hour news are just feeding the frenzy.

mtjm

I do agree that the media did have a play in this with non stop coverage also this nurse could not only felt her job was at stake maybe she felt she'd embarrassed her family, also even at that time god knows what was going through her head she could have had underline issues that we didn't know about.

I know this may sound harsh, she was selfish to take her own life not taking into count her kids and husband and the effect it cost to those involved in the prank

as said above the media had a lot to play in this,

cbl593h

alinton wrote: »

A little detail that you're missing: There was no phone operator on duty, the phones were on night service.

The now-deceased nurse answered the phone - as they all would do if one rings when passing, it's standard procedure there apparently. She was asked to put the caller through to 'My daughter-in-law Kate', the nurse said 'hold on a moment' and put her through to the dept Kate was in.

That was the limit of that nurse's involvement.

The nurse in the ward who answered gave all the info out to the unconvincing Queen and Charles impersonators.

The first nurse received the brunt of the media's attention for 'being so stupid' as to put the call through. The second nurse, who endured bad royal impersonations and a man barking like a dog in the background, got no pillory.

Yet the first nurse is dead.

True, there must be more to this - she must have had some problems of her own, but the hospital spectacularly failed to protect their staff and patients from unwarranted intrusion.

A.

Looks like ALinton was right, more than meets the eye......
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Nurse-Jacintha-Saldanha-attempted-suicide/story-17669849-detail/story.html