Following the suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who fell victim to a hoax call from the Australian radio station 2Day FM, I can’t help thinking the subsequent outrage, particularly in light of the recent Leveson enquiry, is totally misdirected.
Hoax calls from radio stations are nothing new. Enter the term in a You Tube search and it will yield thousands of results from all over the world. Hoax calls have been making people laugh/cringe for many years and will continue to do so for many more to come. That the victim of one chooses to commit suicide is as rare as it is tragic but a well-executed prank call can be very funny to even the most miserable of men.
When 2Day FM played their prank call on air -–without the permission of those involved it would appear -–nobody was particularly surprised or, I should imagine, particularly impressed. The call lacked any real humour and -–aside from the obvious breach of confidentiality - was newsworthy only because the accents of the DJs impersonating the Queen and Prince Charles were so appallingly bad yet were still believed. Nobody took umbrage at the ‘prank’, indeed Prince Charles even attempted a joke about it when asked how he felt about his daughter-in-law’s pregnancy.
Lord Justice Leveson has spent over a year conducting an inquiry into the behaviour of the press, in part, seeking to quantify what qualifies as being ‘in the public interest’. While there can be no argument that a pregnant girl suffering from morning sickness is not in any way newsworthy it could reasonably be claimed that this non-story becomes slightly newsworthy when we consider that the girl in question might be the Queen one day.
But how can it be in the public interest to station untold reporters outside the hospital where she was being treated for what is not an unknown part of early pregnancy? These are people on upwards of £80k a year with university educations! They are being asked to utilise their skills by standing around waiting for someone completely unknown to them - as well as to the public - to come out of a building and say ‘she’s fine’. And their bosses feel it in the public interest for them to inform viewers/listeners of all visitors Middleton does and doesn’t get! Is this serious journalism - and what we pay our license fees for - or just mindless bollocks? You decide. But if it is mindless bollocks how can it possibly be in the public interest?
When it comes to the Windsors, such is the behaviour of the press that every story, however inconsequential, becomes a huge media shitstorm generating headlines all around the globe. In this case it caught the attention of a couple of two-bit Aussie DJs simply looking for a cheap laugh, unaware it would culminate in the tragic death of a nurse; someone whose only crime was not to recognise the importance placed upon the royal family by the world’s media until it was too late.
And spare a thought for the parents-to-be. At what is supposed to be one of the happiest times of their lives, morning sickness or no morning sickness, even the staunchest republican would be hard-pressed not to feel some degree of sympathy for them. They tried to keep the pregnancy quiet but a condition beyond their control put them on a hiding to nothing. And now a nurse is dead. If there is a god, never has the maxim ‘what he gives with one hand he takes with the other’ been truer. Yet, aside from Prince Charles’ attempt at a joke before the suicide, the silence from the Royal Family is deafening.
The BBC is now reporting that Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of the private King Edward VII Hospital where Middleton was being treated, has written a ‘furious’ letter to 2Day FM citing their ‘ill-considered actions’. This follows the hospital’s chief executive, John Lofthouse’s, statement issued after Mrs Saldanha’s death that revealed, “We can confirm that Jacintha was recently the victim of a hoax call to the hospital. The hospital had been supporting her throughout this difficult time.”
One has to wonder what form this support took. Did her bosses - who unlikely ever deign to answer the telephone to general calls - tell her not to worry, that everyone makes mistakes? Or did they give her a thorough dressing down for being so gullible and bringing apparent disrepute on a private hospital used by the royal family–- and by extension the very same people administering the dressing down? We must assume it was the former since to assume the latter would be cynical and would not be supportive to the nurse at all. Indeed it might even have contributed to the tragedy that eventually played out.
Hoax calls from radio stations are nothing new. Enter the term in a You Tube search and it will yield thousands of results from all over the world. Hoax calls have been making people laugh/cringe for many years and will continue to do so for many more to come. That the victim of one chooses to commit suicide is as rare as it is tragic but a well-executed prank call can be very funny to even the most miserable of men.
When 2Day FM played their prank call on air -–without the permission of those involved it would appear -–nobody was particularly surprised or, I should imagine, particularly impressed. The call lacked any real humour and -–aside from the obvious breach of confidentiality - was newsworthy only because the accents of the DJs impersonating the Queen and Prince Charles were so appallingly bad yet were still believed. Nobody took umbrage at the ‘prank’, indeed Prince Charles even attempted a joke about it when asked how he felt about his daughter-in-law’s pregnancy.
Lord Justice Leveson has spent over a year conducting an inquiry into the behaviour of the press, in part, seeking to quantify what qualifies as being ‘in the public interest’. While there can be no argument that a pregnant girl suffering from morning sickness is not in any way newsworthy it could reasonably be claimed that this non-story becomes slightly newsworthy when we consider that the girl in question might be the Queen one day.
But how can it be in the public interest to station untold reporters outside the hospital where she was being treated for what is not an unknown part of early pregnancy? These are people on upwards of £80k a year with university educations! They are being asked to utilise their skills by standing around waiting for someone completely unknown to them - as well as to the public - to come out of a building and say ‘she’s fine’. And their bosses feel it in the public interest for them to inform viewers/listeners of all visitors Middleton does and doesn’t get! Is this serious journalism - and what we pay our license fees for - or just mindless bollocks? You decide. But if it is mindless bollocks how can it possibly be in the public interest?
When it comes to the Windsors, such is the behaviour of the press that every story, however inconsequential, becomes a huge media shitstorm generating headlines all around the globe. In this case it caught the attention of a couple of two-bit Aussie DJs simply looking for a cheap laugh, unaware it would culminate in the tragic death of a nurse; someone whose only crime was not to recognise the importance placed upon the royal family by the world’s media until it was too late.
And spare a thought for the parents-to-be. At what is supposed to be one of the happiest times of their lives, morning sickness or no morning sickness, even the staunchest republican would be hard-pressed not to feel some degree of sympathy for them. They tried to keep the pregnancy quiet but a condition beyond their control put them on a hiding to nothing. And now a nurse is dead. If there is a god, never has the maxim ‘what he gives with one hand he takes with the other’ been truer. Yet, aside from Prince Charles’ attempt at a joke before the suicide, the silence from the Royal Family is deafening.
The BBC is now reporting that Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of the private King Edward VII Hospital where Middleton was being treated, has written a ‘furious’ letter to 2Day FM citing their ‘ill-considered actions’. This follows the hospital’s chief executive, John Lofthouse’s, statement issued after Mrs Saldanha’s death that revealed, “We can confirm that Jacintha was recently the victim of a hoax call to the hospital. The hospital had been supporting her throughout this difficult time.”
One has to wonder what form this support took. Did her bosses - who unlikely ever deign to answer the telephone to general calls - tell her not to worry, that everyone makes mistakes? Or did they give her a thorough dressing down for being so gullible and bringing apparent disrepute on a private hospital used by the royal family–- and by extension the very same people administering the dressing down? We must assume it was the former since to assume the latter would be cynical and would not be supportive to the nurse at all. Indeed it might even have contributed to the tragedy that eventually played out.
