The DJs... apologized for the hoax — sheepishly noting that they were surprised that the call was put through and that their Australian accents were not detected.
December 7, 2012
"A hospital nurse caring for the Duchess of Cambridge, who was duped by two DJs pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles..."
"... is understood to have committed suicide."
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45 comments:
ha ha ha,
quite a prank.
given the revulsion to the prying of the brit press in the phone scandals, i expect some backlash and perhaps a bit of royal privacy to result.
This is sad, but I find it hard to understand how someone could take this path. It's obviously a joke. Sure she's going to take some ribbing about it, but come on it's not that big a deal.
The focus on the DJ's should be expanded to include her employer. I just can't understand this unless there's more to the story.
Revenge by suicide? Another trend?
She's taking the royals too seriously, is the problem.
there is zero evidence in that story that the two events were linked other than both being mentioned in the story.
Myself, I'm a Phil Hendrie fan.
This stuff you're posting today is just killing me.
X said...
there is zero evidence in that story that the two events were linked other than both being mentioned in the story.
This is true but it isn't proof. This would be an incredible coincidence if they aren't related. Similar to the incredible coincidence it would be if the Professor's earlier post on triggered suicide were not in preparation for this post.
It's funny until somebody loses an eye.
Then it's still funny, just not around that person.
- Old usenet saying
The FCC no longer allows US prank calls, but if somebody calls you by mistake, that call is fair game.
A U.S Representative who was an eyewitness to what actually happened at the JFK assassination and LBJ's swearing in is understood to have died Tuesday night.
It is a remarkable juxtaposition; first, Althouse's post on the Fort Wayne journalist, whose expose-subject in an ivestigatory story killed himself. With the accompanying rationalization from a Poynter Institute expert. It seemed credible and sensible to me.
Now, this story. To be sure, we must await any factual linking of the nurse's suicide to the Australian deejays' prank call.
If there is a suicide note or other documentation of a link between the suicide and the prank call, it would be interesting to more closely examine the Poynter Institute expert's discussion.
Does it matter; journalism versus pranking?
X said...
there is zero evidence in that story that the two events were linked other than both being mentioned in the story.
One can certainly hypothesize dire warnings from the hospital about giving out any info on the Royals. Words, like "fired' and "Jail". Certainly in this country, it would be a crime under HIPAA to disclose medical info on a patient.
Even if there is some sort of connection, don't blame the pranker for the suicide of the prankee. One chooses to kill oneself. It is 100% the fault of the self-murderer.
It could be an investigation will turn up she was threatened with termination, along with other staff - for trying to be helpful to the family but violating the UK's version of HIPAA. Since the nurse was duped by media DJs pretending to be family.
We don't know.
But the scales of who benefits currently stand at a nurse and maybe other caregivers facing disgrace and loss of a job - while the media that lied and duped them makes millions(and other UK papers had a feeding frenzy with salacious tidbits from the Aussie's 'scoop')
Do the two Aussies have blood on their hands?
Perhaps they do.
If so, it seems both should collect a beatdown besides a fatter paycheck.
George Clooney is right that no nation with freedoms given to media meant that Freedom to be taken out of the context it was given in mind of - open political discourse, flow of vital information - to go into the sphere of intruding into the privacy of selected lives targeted for media money-making opportunities.
Dead nurse.
Phone calls of celebs hacked by the media in the UK.
Private emails of pols in the US and UK hacked by media conglomerates to make money - or political activists trying to embarass or destroy their political target.
Videos made in one country under freedom! - but which are intended to cause harm and death when they electronically cross Borders.
The technology has bounded forward, and new limits need to be established. Careful new limits - that preserve the intent of an open society - but instructs the media that to have those freedoms they have limits as well.
No opening of celeb email as wel as time-honored ban by law from opening celeb's postal mail.
Person privacy must be respected for celebs and pols in areas where regular citizens expect it - home, medical situations.
Nations have a right to protect secrets.
Celebs and pols have a right not to be harassed in public. Paparazzi do not have a right to harry people driving about like Lady Di or shove George Clooney in the back hoping he will turn and they get a money-making "angry reaction shot".
Dead nurse.
Thousands of Americans put in fear of their lives from a video made "hoping it would cause injury and death to Americans and Jews overseas".
Sarah Palins medical records.
NBC sued for malice in concocting stuff to amp up their ratings.
The lady who killed herself did nothing wrong re the royals. All she did was put a call through to the nurses' station. I bet there were other things in her life that bear more relation to her suicide...if it was in fact a suicide.
The nurse who actually gave out the information, OTOH...IDK what the British version of HIPAA is, but no doubt she violated some privacy laws by giving out so much information.
Nomennovum said...
Even if there is some sort of connection, don't blame the pranker for the suicide of the prankee. One chooses to kill oneself. It is 100% the fault of the self-murderer.
==================
I don't think people are in the mood for "anything goes" private or "official media company" bullying..or violation of zones of privacy that is aimed at wrecking others lives or making a buck or gaining revenge by victimizing.
What a fucking asshole you are!
Any suicide is 100% the fault of the self-murderer????
Like the mentally handicapped gil that killed herself in California because the mother of a classmate that detested the impaired girl began calling and inserting Facebook entries and texting telling the handicapped girl she was inferior, ugly, had no right to live?
Or the Irish immigrant in Massachusetts that was targeted by a gang of mean girls and ridden a year of hell at school and then depression and then into a noose??
Lets suppose you are right, asshole.
Then the recourse would be for the UK nurse, if fired and disgraced for the media duping her - to seek out and take a scalpel to the Aussie DJs face..and not "self-murder" ?
Would it have been better if the bullying of the Irish girl had triggered what other non-stop bullying has done - a gun is brought in to school to end the pain and suffering from tormentors - and the bullied tries to to settle accounts that way?
Years ago when I still lived in Madison, I dated a girl whose older brother and his friends were into making prank calls and recording them. He listened to them endlessly. This was all well before the days of the Tube Bar crank calls and their glorification by "The Simpsons."
In retrospect, I probably should have ratted him out--I can still hear the confused sincerity of his victims' voices--mainly older people.
These things were done for puerile reasons, for trophy making and because there were no adults in charge.
That ultra-cautious is understood to have construction just has me rolling my eyes. I guess the blame is on English libel laws?
Maybe these "prank phone calls" ought to be classed as fraud and, if someone dies as a result, the death is classed as manslaughter.
edutcher said...
Maybe these "prank phone calls" ought to be classed as fraud and, if someone dies as a result, the death is classed as manslaughter.
===============
The Left has begun a dangerous new sort of prank call that unlike the perhaps inadvertent destruction of lives and harm done by the Aussies does seek to endanger their prank target.
SWATTING.
Meaning a left activist with a discardable cell phone calls 911 and claims that they are right by the house of the conservative editor of "Red State Politics" and he has a woman in a headlock, threatening to kill her and "I think a shot was fired".
LA SWAT then goes in hot and heavy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHH!!!
Such a funny prank to do in our free country under free speech. Yes it may be a false police report, but that is excused because it is just a funny prank!
See??
Cedarford,
I suppose I should be surprised and disgusted that you managed to somehow wedge Nakoulah's YouTube video into this thread. But surprised, no. Disgusted yes.
I suppose I should be surprised and disgusted that you managed to somehow wedge Nakoulah's YouTube video into this thread
In defense to Cedarford, he is referring to the actual act of SWATTING.
Has nothing to do with Nakouly.
From the Althouse Archives: Governor Walker Accepts Prank Phone Call From Prankster Pretending To Be David Koch
Interesting who the cheerleaders were then.
Cedarford is just fondly remembering the days of his youth when he would call up the Frank home and shout into the phone "Jew home?"
I'm in favor of these sorts of pranks by entertainers because there are a lot of people out there who lack the talent to be cruel on their own.
EMD,
You're barking up the wrong tree. See Cedarford at 11:27 for my reference. I hadn't even seen his 12:25 comment when I began typing my own.
The surname is Portuguese, and is found throughout the Portuguese diaspora. If Brazilian or South African [i.e. not from within the EU] she may have felt that her work permit was at risk.
It would also explain why she didn't notice the false accent.
She did give out confidential information to persons not authorised to receive it, albeit unwittingly; although no charges were laid, she would have been aware that this is an offence for which disciplinary action was a possibility.
Finally, she will have been the subject of a great deal of attention in the last few days, and that in itself would have been distressing.
Strange, I was just now reading a book on euthanizing pets, so interesting couldn't put it down.
She's taking the royals too seriously, is the problem. rhhardin is right. They should be mocked at every chance. The photos of Harry and antics in Las Vegas were perfect. Honesty, to keep a thing like that up is just ridiculous.
Did you see the cars at the wedding? Come. On.
Don't even talk to me about global warming or climate change then get in one of those creaky things and drive around the place. I will accept the truth on those matters but not from the likes of that family so just shut up on anything important in fact go away please.
I feel an odd hostility toward that whole institution and family. They have nothing to do with me yet I do feel hostility.
A few years ago I called my friends at holiday for something or other and kept getting their answering services. That was when Elizabeth's "annus horribilis" was still recent in memory. I called back using as reedy a voice as I could manage and delivered a holiday message to "Aaaall my loyal subjects. Rrright the whooooole world round.
One-by-one.
Iiiiiindi-vid-ually.
One at a time.
To wish you each and every one a veeeeeeeery meeeeeeery Crrrrrrrist-mas.
///What?///
Pause.
Charles, always such an anus horriblis, what?
Pause.
Oh, they're not loyal subjects.
Pause.
Well, that's dif-rrrrent.
Pause.
Nevermind. *click*
And left ten or so such messages. I kept going and going and kept getting answering services and automatic voice mail machines it pissed me off and made me feel like hey what's everybody doing and leaving me out. So I played the same joke on all of them using the same voice. I had my routine down pat and then someone actually answered and I was wholly unprepared for real conversation. I was all uh uh uh uh uh uh, yeah, happy holidays and all that. Glad I got you at home. Heh.
Then I forgot about that.
Then a week later I went to an evening party New Years or something and people were gathered the party just starting and they were just then concluding who the jackass was that left the strange message pretending to be the queen. They were recalling the message, they all had the same thing, they had to firs realize they all received a strange message and it was all identical, they had just concluded it was me when I walked in, the timing of that was coincidental. Only one person hung up the message in disgust without trying to figure who it was, a guy from Nicaragua who shrugged it off as just piss, but the rest really struggled to figure it out. That's what they were laughing about when I walked in. The whole thing turned out much more effective than I had imagined it would. One guy said he called all his female relatives drilling them hard on the joke he knew they were playing on him, it was their sort of thing.
Thereafter they referred to me as Queen Elizabeth recalling being punked and enjoying that earlier jest, and I didn't appreciate that but didn't let it show, because after all I did imitate her, and that went on for about a year.
"anus horriblis" - Chip Ahoy
Heh. Hemorrhoids, huh?
"What a fucking asshole you are!
Any suicide is 100% the fault of the self-murderer????" - the Illustrious Cederford
Did I say 100%? Oh, so sorry.
I meant "200%."
Thanks, dick.
Losing your job is no reason to self-murder.
Alex said...
Losing your job is no reason to self-murder.
I agree--she may have over reacted--but it's separate from the propriety of the prank call.
Publicly, the hospital said it supports her and wasn't blaming her.
The DJs have taken themselves off the air. Is this the proper thing to do or is it a cowardly way to avoid being confronted with complaints from listeners?
It would be irony if the DJs were fired and socially ostracized and ended up killing themselves!
The DJs have taken down their Twitter accounts. A producer for the station says they have been "ordered" not to speak to the media.
"Then the recourse would be for the UK nurse, if fired and disgraced for the media duping her - to seek out and take a scalpel to the Aussie DJs face..and not "self-murder" ? Would it have been better if the bullying of the Irish girl had triggered what other non-stop bullying has done - a gun is brought in to school to end the pain and suffering from tormentors - and the bullied tries to to settle accounts that way?" - the Illustrious Cederford
Not sure I understand your logic. I have to attribute my lack of understanding to your lack of logic.
By saying self-murder is not the answer for the maltreated, it is not to say murder of the malfeasor is the answer. Geddit?
The proper answer is to show dignity and to seek recourse legally and without recourse to deadly violence. That is not to say that a punch in the nose might not be called for, but -- really! -- killing?
Why does this need to be explained?
Members of the 4th Estate stood around gawking and recording Princess Diana's death and perhaps even "caused" the chase in the first place.
Do the Royals have any special rights under Commonwealth Laws for prosecuting such frauds?
The DJs have taken themselves off the air. Is this the proper thing to do or is it a cowardly way to avoid being confronted with complaints from listeners?
----------------
No, their employer took them off the air in a firestorm of threats from angry Australians.
The media station is being hit by so many people deluging them with criticism and alledging management, not just the DJs have blood on their hands - that the stations email, twitter, and facebook accounts are now frozen.
The oh-so-clever and funny prankster DJs are out of a job, pending events...
@Cedarford: Off topic, but note that there isn't a competing narrative for cause and effect as in the Benghazi story. I add this because you were similarly exercised over protests to the jailing of the film maker.
Novvennum - By saying self-murder is not the answer for the maltreated, it is not to say murder of the malfeasor is the answer. Geddit?
The proper answer is to show dignity and to seek recourse legally and without recourse to deadly violence. That is not to say that a punch in the nose might not be called for, but -- really! -- killing?
Why does this need to be explained?
--------------
As things stand - society offers little or no defense against those that torment them, invade privacy. And new technology can make the pranking (see SWATTING) a life shattering event, and allow the bullying of a few moments in class to become unrelenting torment in and out of school for the bullied or victimized.
And the current mode is not a lone bully that can be confronted mano a mano, but gangs targeting prey
where a "punch to the nose" only will amp up the gangs bullying.
What I am saying is that I would prefer society getting norms and laws that would end the amped up vicious pranking and bullying. Better that than violence towards others or self.
But for some, if life has become so intolerable under predators and so futile as no one seems able to stop them and suicide is the only recourse left a depressed victim can see - why not go and take out as many of the predators as one can - before the victim takes themselves out??
That also sends a more powerful message to society, and a bigger investigation with bigger repercussions to those that could have stopped it, but didn't.
Anybody who wasn't outraged at the prank before she committed suicide should be embarrassed to express outrage now.
The prank wasn't made worse by the suicide. It was just a mild prank.
I just don't see it as a prank. The DJs work in the media industry. Anyone in that industry would love to get information on the Dutchess. However, there's a limit, and usually fraud goes beyond that limit. The DJ's committed fraud.
This isn't unusual. Everyday, people commit fraud in an attempt to gain medical records they ordinarily would not be entitled to receive. Hospital staff, traditionally trained to care for injured and sick, must also be trained how to prevent those committing fraud from taking advantage of the injured and sick. This places a great deal of stress on the medical staff and takes away time from treatment of patients.
Would I blame the DJ's for the loss of the nurse's life? No. She did that to herself. However, I do think the broadcast media personalities should be fired for committing the fraud.
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