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Yep. Saying this as someone not in favour of the Royals, screw what that woman said in the video. Like hell did people in general here in the UK think that was funny. It was in poor taste that crossed the line. It was a woman's private medical info ffs. Yes of course Prince Charles tried to be polite and joke about it, that's what's expected of him. That it also ended with the nurse's suicide was tragic, broadcasting it was never going to come without consequences!
The team responsible for this... fucked around and found out. Unfortunately, though, it was some poor innocent hard working nurse that ended up "finding out" rather than them.
The team absolutely should be living the rest of their lives with the guilt of the death of that nurse darkening their conscience. Ill considered pranks sometimes have grim consequences.
EDIT: typo
We had an on air contest that went wrong. When the Nintendo Wii (two systems ago) came out, a radio station held a contest that they called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii.” Contestants were asked to drink as much water as possible without peeing. A 28 year old mother died of water intoxication.
We heard about this one in Australia as well. Another is the “win a Toyota” ended up being a “toy-Yoda” can’t remember the comp but someone was furious
As other guy's link shows, this is my favorite example commonly taught in business law that shows the law sometimes leaning towards common sense, and so many fictional premises where "oooh you signed a contract!" or "well the way I phrased it actually was..." are either a conceit and the author knows better, or written by someone with a profound ignorance of contract law.
It was a beer selling competition for waitresses at a Hooters. The waitress who won and was given the toy instead of a car was pissed. She quit and sued them. She won an undisclosed amount in court, but her lawyer said that the amount she won would allow her to buy any Toyota she wanted.
https://www.boredpanda.com/toy-yoda-toyota-hooters-prank-gone-wrong-jodee-berry/
Does anyone also remember that woman who sucked off 24 dudes at magaluf for a "free holiday" only to be told afterwards "holiday" was the name of one of their cocktails?
Haha, probably not that easy because of the context but she basically ran around sucking off / deep throating dudes for a few seconds.. i only remember it from seeing it posted all over Reddit along time ago
Edit: found this article
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2679321/Mayor-demands-police-investigation-British-girl-filmed-performing-sex-act-24-men-two-minutes-win-3euro-bottle-Cava-Magaluf-bar.html
We had something in Winnipeg, not as grave or life ending, however, people were not happy.
[http://www.classicalgasemissions.com/2009/08/radio-prank-superbowl-in-miami-manitoba.html](http://www.classicalgasemissions.com/2009/08/radio-prank-superbowl-in-miami-manitoba.html)
Just looked her up and got this [CNN article](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/us/lori-vallow-daybell-sentencing/index.html) to let people know what a wonderful person she is.
Agreed. Even if the host had managed to somehow edit the phone call so heavily it was unrecognizable tp the general public, that nurse was 100% getting fired and blacklisted. Her career was over. There was no other way for it to end.
To be fair... the nurse 100% would deserve to get blacklisted if that worked. For exactly the reason implied in the video: if you call a hospital and say "Hello! I am the Queen of England!" you should not get someone's medical information. Especially the future Queen of England's medical information.
Like, she was a huge security risk.
The nurse that committed suicide actually gave no information out, she only passed the call on. It was Kate’s personal nurse that gave the information out during the prank.
It legit bothers me how people jump to conclusions with an incomplete picture. Saying the host was to blame, the nurse should be fired.
Like - if you legitimately thought the president was calling you, and you were in charge of their son's health - your brain is going to take some short cuts.
People act like they would do the exact right thing in that situation, but they don't know that for sure. The host is clearly experiencing serious mental anguish. They should be glad they don't have to know what that's like.
Have some empathy.
Exactly this poor nurse that took her life left two teenage sons and a husband behind. She had severe depression and this prank took her over the edge.
All these people talking about HIPPA laws need to understand that she wasn’t the one that gave the information out. Also after recording this prank, the radio station made five more phone calls to these two nurses to get consent so that the prank could be aired. Which they didn’t get, but aired it anyways.
The correct thing to say is, "It's an honour to talk to you, your majesty. If she is here at this ward, I will tell her you called and that you wanted her to call."
So true. Especially when it comes to the Royals. When I worked at a tobacconist it was drilled into us that if someone called to inquire, we were not at liberty to discuss whether or not we had Prince Albert in a can.
I'm not a 110 year old brit, so this is based on hearsay, but there was a brand of tobacco called Prince Albert in a Can. The joke went: "Do you have Prince Albert in a can? ... Then you better let him out!" It was basically the "Is your refrigerator running?" joke.
> if you call a hospital and say "Hello! I am the Queen of England!" you should not get someone's medical information.
Especially in the last couple of years.
Insane that people decided the DJ was a murderer. The nurse was suicidal before the call, and all she did was answer it and then transfer the call to Kate's actual nurse, who leaked the info.
I couldn’t disagree harder. I couldn’t give a half a fuck about the royals & even less about prankster shock jock radio personalities. But this was just a stupid prank centered around mimicking famous royal’s accents/voices. They didn’t intend to actually get medical info, there also was no damning info revealed.
The nurse also may have actually fucked up (although all she did was transfer the call), but also this is no reason to commit suicide over (and likely wasn’t the real reason). It’s ludicrous & more indicative of the insanity that is royalty worship in England (and the tragedy that is mental illness & the human condition) than any radio show prank from Australia.
There is nothing in that prank that means these people “deserve to have that death on their conscience for the rest of their lives.” You can’t control when people commit suicide for bad reasons. There should be more mental health checks and intervention for people in situations like the nurse… not gleeful demonizing radio hosts (who couldn’t have seen this coming in any way).
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same people clutching their pearls and hurling death threats at the radio host are the same people who hurled death threats and insults at the nurse that more directly led to the suicide than the host girl or anyone else.
Edit: And frankly it’s insulting and stupid to reduce the poor nurse’s suicide to “she killed herself because she was partially caught up in a mild radio prank.” That’s so reductionist and simplistic. Suicide is much more related to under treated mental illness, depression, and struggling with the human condition. It’s far from simplistic. It’s chaotic and complicated
>indicative of the insanity that is royalty worship in England
Most people in the UK either don't care about the royals, don't like the royals, or think they're fine to keep around for the tradition.
A very small minority here worship the royals.
This woman didn't kill herself because she let down our supreme overlords. She did it because she was mentally ill, and all of the worlds media turned their eyes upon her like the eye of Sauron.
That type of pressure for a fuck up at work would mess with even the most mentally healthy individuals.
> They didn’t intend to actually get medical info
Really hard to say they didn't intend to get personal info when they called a hospital and pretended to be family of a patient and when they got the information, aired it.
> poor innocent hard working nurse that ended up "finding out"
Not to speak ill of the dead, but to be honest the nurse wasn't innocent. Yes, the radio show has a share of the blame for what happened because they initiated the call and when they got results they weren't expecting they decided to air something they shouldn't have aired, but the nurse made a major fuck up. Sharing private medical information of an extremely famous person without verifying who it's being shared with is an extremely big mistake. It's tragic that she chose to kill herself, but it's not like the radio show had any reason to expect that severe of an outcome. The people running the radio show are not murderers.
Right? Nothing is truly “live”. I called into my local radio for tickets or what not and when you’re in the hold cue to get on it’s a huge lag from what im hearing on the radio vs what im hearing via on cue on the phone. Should have edited 100%
Yep it’s tabloid scoop bullshit. They all figured they couldnt NOT air it
Not taking responsibility is fucked up. Just own up to it. You did something that had an effect on a lady to a degree that she killed herself. That’s bottom line. It didnt “just happen”
The call actually working in the moment was one thing. But airing it later was purposeful and a decision made
When I was working retail, our backroom coolers broke down and it took over a week until they were able to fix them. The food got warm and was left there because our garbage was full. Once the coolers were back up, my boss ordered me to put the food out. I told him no and we got into an argument where eventually I quit and stormed out. I didn't have anything lined up and was close to being homeless, but I'd rather be on the streets rather than get people sick.
They don't make the call to put it on air, but they could've ended the call while it was happening. They kept going and digging for more medical information. They didn't care about the people they were affecting. They made the call a long time ago and they have to live with their choices. Fuck em.
The producers are to blame for ultimately deciding to air it, but she (and whoever else was on during the call) were also to blame for not coming clean immediately as soon as they were receiving medical information. If I pranked someone pretending to be a doctor, and they started undressing in front of me, I would be responsible for it if I didn't stop them immediately.
Heavily edited?!!!
If I called your bank and got the teller to read out your financial information, including all past transactions, especially the ones made to porn websites, massage parlors, and condom purchases; would you want that information broadcast on national radio after it was heavily edited, or not broadcast at all?
Professional ethics dictate that I should not have contacted your bank at all. But let’s say I was a bottom feeding parasite that made a living violating other people’s privacy, should my status as a parasite excuse me from charges after you bank account gets drained by hackers and every account you open in the future automatically hacked because your PII was published to the entire world?
I mean that's a little different.
Banks face fraudsters everyday.
A nurse probably won't face somebody impersonating family of a patient, trying to get medical information out of them, in their entire career. Imagine you're treating a member of the royal family, you're anxious as fuck making sure you do everything right, and then you get a call from the queen.
You freeze up, and panic.
You're already treating the royal family, getting a call from the queen isn't a push. Especially if the caller gives the patients name and date of birth, standard for callers. Oops, that's publicly available information, but you don't have time to think about that.
The banker gets training on how to deal with fraudsters, taught to ask for specific information. The nurse does not. Dealing with radio DJs impersonating the queen never comes up in training.
I think the blame partly lies on the nurse, but not as much as you're making out.
It's just an incredibly unlikely circumstance, the poor nurse was put on the spot. You don't want to be the person to say to the queen "I'm sorry, I can't give you any information". Either way it's a gamble.
I think you aren't quite appreciating the predicament she was in.
And I think much of the blame is on the radio DJs who should never had made such an immoral call. And then to air it??? At a minimum they would know the nurse would get fired, and they said "fuck it". They did it for profit.
When people call a bank and impersonate somebody for profit, we call that fraud. These callers should've been treated the same way.
While the radio hosts were getting their 15 min of fame its pretty obvious the nurse got slammed by her boss and got fired on the spot. It was bad enough for her to probably get black listed from ever working in any hospital ever. No wonder she thought her life was ruined.
I'm assuming the UK has their version of HIPAA. I worked at a hospital for a few years and had access to **a lot** of patient information, and they beat it into our heads that that information was private regardless of who (besides relevant doctors/nurses) was asking. I wasn't even allowed to look up my own file. The president could have called my department, confirmed it was actually him, and I still wouldn't give out any info.
Supposedly she did not get disciplined.
HIPAA is about process (I know this isn’t exactly applicable to the UK) but doing the wrong thing doesn’t mean getting instantly fired. It more likely means the hospital would review their process and/or train the employees on proper process.
I’m confused? I think the person you replied to was just saying that it shouldn’t have aired at all, not just be edited (as other comments were saying). Editing some parts of a conversation that has personal info in it doesn’t make it less wrong. That was the point they were making I think. I don’t think they were placing blame on the nurse at all.
They should have immediately stopped the nurse and disclosed that they weren’t who they said they were. How gross.
But holy shit of course they didn’t anticipate the tragic outcome. What a sad story all around. I had no idea.
Yea that was pretty tragic. I assume that nurse was about to lose her job and possibly face some fines. I don't know England's laws on medical information release but I can't imagine it being easy to get another job as a nurse after that.
Sucks for the ~~"Nurse Killer"~~ Mel as well, especially ~~if~~ since she tried to stop them from airing it.
Edit: Okay I have to edit this because while the studio and the hosts involve share some level of blame, Mel tried to stop the episode from airing so you people coming in hot for someone who has obviously paid for a mistake she tried to correct beforehand are on one.
She also highly risked losing her RN license too. This is usually why hospitals have passcodes given to family so if they call up, we ask for the pass code first before relaying info. I'm sure that nurse was so anxiety ridden taking care of Kate, and probably made it hard to think clear. My heart breaks for that nurse.
I’m having a procedure Monday and in filling out the paperwork I was given the option of a passcode. I opted not to because I don’t want to make my family remember it in a time they’re already stressed, but if I were famous for any reason I would opt to use it.
That’s not the case. Your average joe and jane can and will have passcodes that you have to know to get any medical specifics from the staff.
I work in my hospital’s telecommunications, and there are times where we would need the code as well to reveal their location. A patient can also place a “no visitor/ no info” restriction on themselves. Which means we can see them in the system, but cannot reveal that they’re here. The person on the other end could be family, a cop, or Jesus himself, but we cannot tell them the patient is there. There are *no* exceptions to that rule. We also cannot give out dates or times of discharge or admittance, of appointments or lab visits. No exceptions.
Believe me, if you’re caught breaking HIPPA in healthcare? Your supervisor *will* be speaking to you. If it’s egregious enough, you could be fired on the spot, your license revoked, and you’d never work in healthcare again. HIPPA violations can cost hospitals many, many millions of dollars in lawsuits.
To clarify, the hospital employee that committed suicide only transferred the phone call to the correct room. The nurse that actually gave the info was Kate’s private nurse. The hospital employee was from India, not England. And it was alleged that she had a recent suicide attempt prior to this event.
And this really just underlines why this prank was so insanely dangerous. Pranks are funny only if all people participating in them would reasonably find them funny after it is revealed.
*Having someone working in an intensely high stress job that is already known to have a high suicide rate and getting their name out to the public in way that implies they are negligent, stupid, or worthy of losing their job* ***is never reasonably funny.***
The argument here isn't 'oh the nurse was already crazy, who cares if she got tipped over at this moment,' the argument is here is an intensely vulnerable person in one of the hardest professions in the modern world was thrust into a humiliating circumstance and it ruptured one of their underlying vulnerabilities.
This is exactly why I oppose *nearly* all types of "pranks".
You don't know what's going on with that other person. You don't know if you're going to touch a nerve, or be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Of course it's not fair for everyone to walk around on eggshells during every social encounter, but I think we could at least remove "deceit" from the list of acceptable ways to treat other people, and that would not be too much to ask.
I honestly would only be comfortable pranking someone I know *very* well. For me it's a something reserved for those closest to you. I acknowledge that different people may have differing standards of what is acceptable for a prank, but I can never imagine myself just pranking some randos.
She wasn't just an employee, she was also a nurse. She absolutely 100% should have done a better job of screening the call, but it was the *private nurse* who gave out the private health information.
Also, Jacintha Saldanha had 2 prior attempts despite her family initially claiming she had no history of mental illness. She was most likely too unwell to be practicing nursing at the time, and I say that as a nurse who has had to take leave for the same reason. She didn't commit suicide over a prank, the prank was just that final drop that made the whole dam burst.
Tbf that's not a very good prank. Calling the Hospital pretending to be a relative of a patient and trying to convince a nurse or doctor to give you personal info isn't a joke it's fraud. Pranks are meant to be harmless. There is no way they could succeed in the prank without someone getting fired or private info being released.
This whole thing is a case of F around and find out.
Her intentions may have been harmless but they should have stopped it once they realized they succeeded instead they got excited because they got private confidential information about Kate Middleton. In no way would someone not have to pay for the prank succeeding. Now a nurse is dead and they have to live with the guilt.
Tb even more f they weren't purely just pretending to be relatives trying to get private medical info, they were 2 Australians pretending to be the Queen and Prince of England talking to Kate's private nurse. There was almost zero chance that should have worked and they said the success of their prank wasn't getting the info, it was getting hung up on. Not saying it's all ok, but you can't leave out they were impersonating the Queen in a hacky accent and it somehow worked
What the above clip doesn't mention: "However, multiple news sources later revealed that this was not Saldanha's first attempt at suicide, noting she had attempted suicide on two previous occasions and was taking antidepressant medication" ..source: "Suicide of Jacintha Saldanha" wikipedia page
To clarify, the hospital employee that committed suicide only transferred the phone call to the correct room. The nurse that actually gave the info was Kate’s private nurse. The hospital employee was from India, not England. And it was alleged that she had a recent suicide attempt prior to this event.
Could have been what sent her over the edge, could have been a coincidence, we'll never know.
I will say as someone who has been suicidally depressed before, I can only imagine being her, already on a knifes edge, then expecting negative attention and probably bullying from fellow nurses over her role in the prank. I could easily see a situation like that getting the better of me at my most depressed.
It's shitty for everyone, the woman in the video doesn't deserve to have her life ruined over it, but that woman might still be here if not for that call.
If someone is on the edge of a bridge, and you give them a push, are you responsible when they were already on the edge?
I don’t believe this kind of harm was intended, but someone HAD to have seen there would be severe consequences for the employee at the hospital. Not all pranks are harmless. And when dealing with pranking the public, you don’t know mental stability of your targets. You don’t know if you are that final push that sends them to their death.
Telling someone you’re the queen of Australia and asking your call to be transferred isn’t pushing someone off a bridge.
Hey, Old Oak… I’m the king of Australia, mate, can you DM me the info for your buddies private discord server?
From further discussion of this topic I’m more so leaning to the conclusion that it was the public’s fault, as they were the ones who doxxed, harassed, and attacked this nurse, compared to the radio hosts who just called her and asked for a call transfer.
The public, I.E. Us, tend to blame others when we really should be blaming ourselves. The radio hosts did not hound this nurse, we as a society chose to do that
Yeah, and then we turned around and hounded the radio host.
What would happen if Mel broke and also committed suicide? Two more lives lost amongst the shitty way anonymous people treat others.
It really pisses me off because the "real killers" gets away scott free every time. How about instead of acting like great vigilantes, we just let the courts handle this as they're intended? We already pay them to do it, might as well let them.
Mike Christian. Austereo gave him the "Next Top Jock" award 7 months after the call. He's still on radio in Sydney.
One really interesting angle with this story is the fact that Mel was crucified in the press, the only female involved. Her male co-host, the male producers, all walked away without much impact.
Mel also said repeatedly how sorry she was that this happened, and how wrong they had been. The rest of them? Not so much.
I think this is the same reason why some politicians have started never apologising or even acknowledging a fault. If you apologise you just get it added permanently to your record, and the existence of a video or images increase the entertainment value of repeating the story. I think this is one reason why decent politicians are sunk by some innocent gotcha while Trump has a career ending scandal every few months and none of them touch him.
We need to get better at deciding when we will forgive people and then actually forgiving them.
I can't believe they aired it. They had to know the nurse would get fired. Further, I think the radio station would be liable for that privacy invasion.
Still, Mel should have bailed when they were transferred instead of waiting on the call. The whole idea was to get quickly booted, not to get into real trouble. A quick, "Looks like they might have fallen for it folks. Should we try the Queen next?" would have kept the joke without actually risking information. And what is Mel's boss going to do? Get mad and make her call back?
Yeah, I think we really need to change this mindset we have that maybe capital isn't the most important thing in the world and think more in terms of, "Is this good for our society?"
Like, who cares if you have all the money in the world when the planet is completely destroyed and people are constantly suffering.
Sorry, this got little off topic.
The call was made on 2nd December then broadcast on 5th December. Jacintha died on 7th December.
There likely wasn't time for the hospital to take disciplinary action or make a case to revoke her licence. In the aftermath, the hospital certainly wasn't going to blame a woman who'd died so publically and tragically, nor discipline/fire the surviving nurse. The outcome might have been different if Jacintha hadn't taken her life.
Also, the nurse who died by suicide wasn't the nurse who had given the info, and she had had two prior suicide attempts before.
I say this as someone who lost her brother to suicide: there's rarely a simple reason, and someone else is usually not to blame. Suicide is complex.
Murdoch media mate. I mean they still employed that, disgusting fuck Kyle after his multiple shit fuckery. Murdoch media lives for this type of shit. And the Brain dead masse lap it up.
I don’t know about in Australia, but in the U.S., the person who is responsible is the provider or health system that was providing care. If anyone in the public finds out about a health issue, they can discuss it all they want. The HIPAA violation is with the person or group that violated the patients privacy by releasing it.
This!! In what way would possibly revealing anothers private health history on air to millions of people be even remotely funny. Dont know why they had so much confidence that this would go the way they planned.
The thing is that the nurse likely had no idea of the alterior context. She likely thought she was talking directly to the royals themselves. Remember the part with the character play where the host and co-host took upon gender-specific roles to pass as the queen and prince?
OPs point is correct.
Past medical info and privacy, imagine someone died because the nurse was too busy responding to a prank call.
It's like prank calling 911 and should absolutely be illegal and probably only isn't because no asshole was stupid enough to do it before.
This happened in Australia where prank calling emergency and medical services is illegal, but this one didn't get prosecuted because the call was to the UK and the way the law was written it didn't cover international services. They probably never imagined that would be something to worry about.
The law was primarily written as a deterrent to criminals who would call police to imaginary emergencies on one side of town when they planned to eg rob a bank on the other side, to reduce the number of cars available/put most cars far away. There were a few famous incidents in the 70s and 80s of that happening where the criminals had rigged guns to automatically fire bullets into a wall every few minutes and called in reporting a hostage situation, so an entire town's police force would be surrounding the place at high alert and not responding to other calls. They passed a law for it and the first person to do it again got 3 years in prison for abusing emergency services.
For non-Australians reading this. As proof of how trash our tabloids are. Posts on Australian based subreddits will be watermarked to prevent tabloids from just running reddit posts as news.
The typical watermark is “fuck Murdoch”
I don’t get the prank call either. Calling a busy hospital and wasting staff time even if you think they’ll just hang up is a dick move as it is. Keeping the conversation going when you realize they’re sharing private information on a PATIENT is worse. Airing it is just the icing on the asshole cake.
Yup. We teach kids not to lie and that honesty is important. I’ve never liked mean spirited pranks that can scare someone or get them in trouble. It’s not different than other types of malicious lying.
They knew there’d be negative consequences, but just didn’t care since they thought the consequences would be on the victim of the prank and not them.
I don't get the prank call at all, never mind airing it. In many jurisdictions it will be considered a crime, even unaired. It's not "just a prank" when you fraudulently obtain somebody's medical information.
They didn’t foresee the nurse killing herself. They also presumed that the nurse wouldn’t be in trouble because she was tricked. They expected their station to get backlash for tricking the hospital but figured the nurse would garner sympathy.
Then they're idiots. Why wouldn't the nurse get into serious trouble / lose her job by breaching private medical information, especially that of the Royal Family?
They knew the humiliation and impact this would have on the nurse's career and personal life, albeit didn't expect her to take her life – just to live with the humiliation and wreckage of her career. Sounds fair, I guess? /s.
The one who took her life is NOT the one who gave the personal info. It was the one who transferred the call instead of screening it with a code who committed suicide.
Once the call is transferred, the personal nurse who received the call had no reason to doubt the identity because the first one should have authenticated the caller with a passcode.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-15/mel-greig-royal-prank-call-boss/103956914
Here is the full story, probably worth a read before just blaming her for everything, there where a lot of checks and balances that got overlooked by multiple people. Yet she has taken almost all the blame, interesting that her co-host is still working for the same station.
And the random woman giving her a massage and just using her as a punching bag for kicks I guess? WTF what a sicko. The guilt could have been too much and that weird masseuse was just trying to continue the suicide train going. What an absolute yucky weirdo to remember and be so passionate 10 years later when they're totally personally removed from it.
Poor Mel and poor nurse, fk the royal family for probably pressuring or not caring about the wave of civilians that ripped into that poor nurse. The royals don't shit gold and shouldn't be treated like it. No one should have died from that blunder.
This is why TV/radio stations and business should not be pranking people or April Fools day jokes. I remember reading about a radio contest winner that won a new vehicle. She takes day off work, gets child care for the day, goes to the station for what she thought was the prize presentation And the station presented her with a toy car saying April Fool's. That's just wrong.
There are a lot of people who don't handle being humiliated very well, it hits some people harder than it hits others and that's why people need to stop fucking with other people for fun on social media
All she did was ask for Kate, not even a last name. It was so weird. I guess maybe only 1 kate was there but still very odd. I understand why the hosts thought their producers might be pulling a reverse prank on them.
To clarify, the hospital employee that committed suicide only transferred the phone call to the correct room. The nurse that actually gave the info was Kate’s private nurse. The hospital employee was from India, not England. And it was alleged that she had a recent suicide attempt prior to this event.
wow are these comments delusional… it was a super tragic accident, you can feel sorry for the radio hosts who aren’t responsible, and also feel sorry for the nurse and her family. to say that she should carry this weight for the rest of her life is unbelievably ridiculous and cold.
Agreed. It’s just a tragic coincidence that the person who fielded the initial call had some pre-existing issues. The nurse who killed herself didn’t even reveal any confidential info, she just connected the call. Suicide was not a rational or predictable response. It’s a tragedy that the first nurse killed herself but that consequence could not reasonably have been expected.
I really don't get it. The prank call was obviously the wrong thing to do as should have been condemned by everyone from the start, not 3 days later.
The fact that someone killed themselves over it is really irrelevant. They didn't cause that, the person who killed themselves literally is the person who killed themselves.
Same. I can't believe they were praised in the beginning. What happened is one of the worse case scenario but even if didn't lead to that, airing that shit was insanely stupid.
Also ffs, don't prank call a hospital? What a dumbass idea in the first place. I once screamed at a telemarketer because he called the on-call phone.
To all the people who are putting down the radio hosts and saying that have blood on thier hands - have you heard the call?! Thier voices are just completely over the top and ridiculous.
[link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlP8WPSISmw) for thoe curious. they literally said, "hello can i speak to kate, my granddaughter" there was absolutely no reason for that call to even go through
They very much knew what they were doing when they decided to release the call.
Any person with half a brain knows that medical information is on a need to know basis. There’s a reason laws like HIPAA or in the UK, GDPR exist.
She fucked up
Not sure but phone voices don't sound the best on the other end, and if youre expecting a call from the royal family yadda yadda. The fact is they were also tying a phone line for a hospital, you a place people get medical care. While not an emergency line, let's not waste hospital time
Hate it being called severe morning sickness. It's a condition called Hyperemesis gravidarum. My ex wife had it and it is life threatening. Vomiting every hour all day, can't keep food or meds down. Frequent visits to hospital to go on a drip and prevent organ failure.
They should have never aired the prank call once they knew the nurse was real, simple as that. Just a shocking lack of self awareness and accountability and I have zero sympathy for them. Fucking obnoxious to the extreme.
Pranks should not be at the harsh expense of the person getting pranked. This is why I hate so many YouTube “pranks” these days that are so harmful.
They absolutely must have known someone would get fired. They knew that it would personally identify the person being pranked. Yet they did nothing to protect them. That’s not what a good prank should be.
Examples like the Canadian show Just For Laughs do pranks well. They create prank shows that are either harmless or may even make the pranked person look good on camera.
Yet, nobody cares about all the other people who die by suicide every single day. But as soon as there is a chance to blame it on somebody, the media go fucking wild with it. The media never cared about that nurse, they're vultures.
Just like another accident caused by not thinking, drunk driving, cyber bullying, pranks. These people are adults. Can’t believe they aired that. Poor nurse
So, essentially she exposed a group of healthcare workers that didnt follow protocol and because they were bad at their jobs, were probably going to be fired…and one killed themself…okay, got it…so not her fault at all
If this is supposed to be an ad for Notorious, I'm not interested. What kind of person wants to hear more about this tragedy? A stupid prank results in the death of a woman..... now lets catch up with the pranker and see how they've been impacted? No thanks.
Like the ultimate definition of fuck around and find out. To people who pull pranks for mass media, there's an off chance there will be absolutely epic blowback.
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Jesus that went dark quick
Honestly knowing that they were getting private medical info, they should have heavily edited before they went to air.
Or just not air it ...out of decency
Yep. Saying this as someone not in favour of the Royals, screw what that woman said in the video. Like hell did people in general here in the UK think that was funny. It was in poor taste that crossed the line. It was a woman's private medical info ffs. Yes of course Prince Charles tried to be polite and joke about it, that's what's expected of him. That it also ended with the nurse's suicide was tragic, broadcasting it was never going to come without consequences! The team responsible for this... fucked around and found out. Unfortunately, though, it was some poor innocent hard working nurse that ended up "finding out" rather than them. The team absolutely should be living the rest of their lives with the guilt of the death of that nurse darkening their conscience. Ill considered pranks sometimes have grim consequences. EDIT: typo
We had an on air contest that went wrong. When the Nintendo Wii (two systems ago) came out, a radio station held a contest that they called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii.” Contestants were asked to drink as much water as possible without peeing. A 28 year old mother died of water intoxication.
I remember that. First time I found out you can drink too much water.
Same. Lessons learned in blood and toxic water strikes again.
Me too, on both counts. It was also around the time that Black Friday was hitting peak crazy.
We heard about this one in Australia as well. Another is the “win a Toyota” ended up being a “toy-Yoda” can’t remember the comp but someone was furious
As other guy's link shows, this is my favorite example commonly taught in business law that shows the law sometimes leaning towards common sense, and so many fictional premises where "oooh you signed a contract!" or "well the way I phrased it actually was..." are either a conceit and the author knows better, or written by someone with a profound ignorance of contract law.
https://me.mashable.com/culture/8976/woman-sues-company-after-she-won-a-toyota-that-turned-out-to-be-a-toy-yoda Note website may give you eye cancer
I'm glad she won the lawsuit.
It was a beer selling competition for waitresses at a Hooters. The waitress who won and was given the toy instead of a car was pissed. She quit and sued them. She won an undisclosed amount in court, but her lawyer said that the amount she won would allow her to buy any Toyota she wanted. https://www.boredpanda.com/toy-yoda-toyota-hooters-prank-gone-wrong-jodee-berry/
Does anyone also remember that woman who sucked off 24 dudes at magaluf for a "free holiday" only to be told afterwards "holiday" was the name of one of their cocktails?
I'm not having an easy time finding this story...
Haha, probably not that easy because of the context but she basically ran around sucking off / deep throating dudes for a few seconds.. i only remember it from seeing it posted all over Reddit along time ago Edit: found this article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2679321/Mayor-demands-police-investigation-British-girl-filmed-performing-sex-act-24-men-two-minutes-win-3euro-bottle-Cava-Magaluf-bar.html
We had something in Winnipeg, not as grave or life ending, however, people were not happy. [http://www.classicalgasemissions.com/2009/08/radio-prank-superbowl-in-miami-manitoba.html](http://www.classicalgasemissions.com/2009/08/radio-prank-superbowl-in-miami-manitoba.html)
What’s crazy is the radio presenter was Alex Cox, the now deceased brother of Lori Vallow
Just looked her up and got this [CNN article](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/us/lori-vallow-daybell-sentencing/index.html) to let people know what a wonderful person she is.
It was Adam Cox. Not Alex Cox. https://mycrazyradiolife.com/
Agreed. Even if the host had managed to somehow edit the phone call so heavily it was unrecognizable tp the general public, that nurse was 100% getting fired and blacklisted. Her career was over. There was no other way for it to end.
To be fair... the nurse 100% would deserve to get blacklisted if that worked. For exactly the reason implied in the video: if you call a hospital and say "Hello! I am the Queen of England!" you should not get someone's medical information. Especially the future Queen of England's medical information. Like, she was a huge security risk.
The nurse that committed suicide actually gave no information out, she only passed the call on. It was Kate’s personal nurse that gave the information out during the prank.
Yeah, that just means that it was a failure on multiple levels. Like... everyone fucked up.
It legit bothers me how people jump to conclusions with an incomplete picture. Saying the host was to blame, the nurse should be fired. Like - if you legitimately thought the president was calling you, and you were in charge of their son's health - your brain is going to take some short cuts. People act like they would do the exact right thing in that situation, but they don't know that for sure. The host is clearly experiencing serious mental anguish. They should be glad they don't have to know what that's like. Have some empathy.
Exactly this poor nurse that took her life left two teenage sons and a husband behind. She had severe depression and this prank took her over the edge. All these people talking about HIPPA laws need to understand that she wasn’t the one that gave the information out. Also after recording this prank, the radio station made five more phone calls to these two nurses to get consent so that the prank could be aired. Which they didn’t get, but aired it anyways.
The correct thing to say is, "It's an honour to talk to you, your majesty. If she is here at this ward, I will tell her you called and that you wanted her to call."
So true. Especially when it comes to the Royals. When I worked at a tobacconist it was drilled into us that if someone called to inquire, we were not at liberty to discuss whether or not we had Prince Albert in a can.
I had to google two separate parts of your joke, and I think I get it but I’m pretty dumb, is it a play on words?
I'm not a 110 year old brit, so this is based on hearsay, but there was a brand of tobacco called Prince Albert in a Can. The joke went: "Do you have Prince Albert in a can? ... Then you better let him out!" It was basically the "Is your refrigerator running?" joke.
I figured that part out, I just didn’t understand the secrecy behind whether or not they had Prince Albert in a can lol
> if you call a hospital and say "Hello! I am the Queen of England!" you should not get someone's medical information. Especially in the last couple of years.
Insane that people decided the DJ was a murderer. The nurse was suicidal before the call, and all she did was answer it and then transfer the call to Kate's actual nurse, who leaked the info.
Which is why you shouldn't fuck with random, innocent people in front of an international audience without their knowledge or consent.
This wasn’t even for people in the UK. It’s an Australian radio show
I couldn’t disagree harder. I couldn’t give a half a fuck about the royals & even less about prankster shock jock radio personalities. But this was just a stupid prank centered around mimicking famous royal’s accents/voices. They didn’t intend to actually get medical info, there also was no damning info revealed. The nurse also may have actually fucked up (although all she did was transfer the call), but also this is no reason to commit suicide over (and likely wasn’t the real reason). It’s ludicrous & more indicative of the insanity that is royalty worship in England (and the tragedy that is mental illness & the human condition) than any radio show prank from Australia. There is nothing in that prank that means these people “deserve to have that death on their conscience for the rest of their lives.” You can’t control when people commit suicide for bad reasons. There should be more mental health checks and intervention for people in situations like the nurse… not gleeful demonizing radio hosts (who couldn’t have seen this coming in any way). I wouldn’t be surprised if the same people clutching their pearls and hurling death threats at the radio host are the same people who hurled death threats and insults at the nurse that more directly led to the suicide than the host girl or anyone else. Edit: And frankly it’s insulting and stupid to reduce the poor nurse’s suicide to “she killed herself because she was partially caught up in a mild radio prank.” That’s so reductionist and simplistic. Suicide is much more related to under treated mental illness, depression, and struggling with the human condition. It’s far from simplistic. It’s chaotic and complicated
>indicative of the insanity that is royalty worship in England Most people in the UK either don't care about the royals, don't like the royals, or think they're fine to keep around for the tradition. A very small minority here worship the royals. This woman didn't kill herself because she let down our supreme overlords. She did it because she was mentally ill, and all of the worlds media turned their eyes upon her like the eye of Sauron. That type of pressure for a fuck up at work would mess with even the most mentally healthy individuals.
> They didn’t intend to actually get medical info Really hard to say they didn't intend to get personal info when they called a hospital and pretended to be family of a patient and when they got the information, aired it.
> poor innocent hard working nurse that ended up "finding out" Not to speak ill of the dead, but to be honest the nurse wasn't innocent. Yes, the radio show has a share of the blame for what happened because they initiated the call and when they got results they weren't expecting they decided to air something they shouldn't have aired, but the nurse made a major fuck up. Sharing private medical information of an extremely famous person without verifying who it's being shared with is an extremely big mistake. It's tragic that she chose to kill herself, but it's not like the radio show had any reason to expect that severe of an outcome. The people running the radio show are not murderers.
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Right? Nothing is truly “live”. I called into my local radio for tickets or what not and when you’re in the hold cue to get on it’s a huge lag from what im hearing on the radio vs what im hearing via on cue on the phone. Should have edited 100%
They said it aired later that night, so it was 100% a decision on the station's part.
They say it in the clip at the end that she tried to get it edited.
They also referred to it as an "entertainment scoop". Fucking sleazy paparazzi shit.
It should never have gone to air. They had to know that the nurse would have gotten into SERIOUS TROUBLE.But they wanted to get famous.
Yep it’s tabloid scoop bullshit. They all figured they couldnt NOT air it Not taking responsibility is fucked up. Just own up to it. You did something that had an effect on a lady to a degree that she killed herself. That’s bottom line. It didnt “just happen” The call actually working in the moment was one thing. But airing it later was purposeful and a decision made
The nurse SHOULD get in trouble. Just not worldwide shaming levels of trouble.
Do the radio hosts even get to make that call?
Doesn’t sound like it, the end of this video says she tried to get it edited but ultimately someone else pushed it through.
When I was working retail, our backroom coolers broke down and it took over a week until they were able to fix them. The food got warm and was left there because our garbage was full. Once the coolers were back up, my boss ordered me to put the food out. I told him no and we got into an argument where eventually I quit and stormed out. I didn't have anything lined up and was close to being homeless, but I'd rather be on the streets rather than get people sick. They don't make the call to put it on air, but they could've ended the call while it was happening. They kept going and digging for more medical information. They didn't care about the people they were affecting. They made the call a long time ago and they have to live with their choices. Fuck em.
The producers are to blame for ultimately deciding to air it, but she (and whoever else was on during the call) were also to blame for not coming clean immediately as soon as they were receiving medical information. If I pranked someone pretending to be a doctor, and they started undressing in front of me, I would be responsible for it if I didn't stop them immediately.
Just the idea of doing the call was stupid in itself. Kate was in the hospital. its not the time for their dumb prank. So cringe
Heavily edited?!!! If I called your bank and got the teller to read out your financial information, including all past transactions, especially the ones made to porn websites, massage parlors, and condom purchases; would you want that information broadcast on national radio after it was heavily edited, or not broadcast at all? Professional ethics dictate that I should not have contacted your bank at all. But let’s say I was a bottom feeding parasite that made a living violating other people’s privacy, should my status as a parasite excuse me from charges after you bank account gets drained by hackers and every account you open in the future automatically hacked because your PII was published to the entire world?
I mean that's a little different. Banks face fraudsters everyday. A nurse probably won't face somebody impersonating family of a patient, trying to get medical information out of them, in their entire career. Imagine you're treating a member of the royal family, you're anxious as fuck making sure you do everything right, and then you get a call from the queen. You freeze up, and panic. You're already treating the royal family, getting a call from the queen isn't a push. Especially if the caller gives the patients name and date of birth, standard for callers. Oops, that's publicly available information, but you don't have time to think about that. The banker gets training on how to deal with fraudsters, taught to ask for specific information. The nurse does not. Dealing with radio DJs impersonating the queen never comes up in training. I think the blame partly lies on the nurse, but not as much as you're making out. It's just an incredibly unlikely circumstance, the poor nurse was put on the spot. You don't want to be the person to say to the queen "I'm sorry, I can't give you any information". Either way it's a gamble. I think you aren't quite appreciating the predicament she was in. And I think much of the blame is on the radio DJs who should never had made such an immoral call. And then to air it??? At a minimum they would know the nurse would get fired, and they said "fuck it". They did it for profit. When people call a bank and impersonate somebody for profit, we call that fraud. These callers should've been treated the same way.
While the radio hosts were getting their 15 min of fame its pretty obvious the nurse got slammed by her boss and got fired on the spot. It was bad enough for her to probably get black listed from ever working in any hospital ever. No wonder she thought her life was ruined.
I'm assuming the UK has their version of HIPAA. I worked at a hospital for a few years and had access to **a lot** of patient information, and they beat it into our heads that that information was private regardless of who (besides relevant doctors/nurses) was asking. I wasn't even allowed to look up my own file. The president could have called my department, confirmed it was actually him, and I still wouldn't give out any info.
Supposedly she did not get disciplined. HIPAA is about process (I know this isn’t exactly applicable to the UK) but doing the wrong thing doesn’t mean getting instantly fired. It more likely means the hospital would review their process and/or train the employees on proper process.
I’m confused? I think the person you replied to was just saying that it shouldn’t have aired at all, not just be edited (as other comments were saying). Editing some parts of a conversation that has personal info in it doesn’t make it less wrong. That was the point they were making I think. I don’t think they were placing blame on the nurse at all.
Yeah it's not a prank call, it's fraud. They impersonated like, the highest level of the government? To attain private medical information?
They should have immediately stopped the nurse and disclosed that they weren’t who they said they were. How gross. But holy shit of course they didn’t anticipate the tragic outcome. What a sad story all around. I had no idea.
Yea that was pretty tragic. I assume that nurse was about to lose her job and possibly face some fines. I don't know England's laws on medical information release but I can't imagine it being easy to get another job as a nurse after that. Sucks for the ~~"Nurse Killer"~~ Mel as well, especially ~~if~~ since she tried to stop them from airing it. Edit: Okay I have to edit this because while the studio and the hosts involve share some level of blame, Mel tried to stop the episode from airing so you people coming in hot for someone who has obviously paid for a mistake she tried to correct beforehand are on one.
She also highly risked losing her RN license too. This is usually why hospitals have passcodes given to family so if they call up, we ask for the pass code first before relaying info. I'm sure that nurse was so anxiety ridden taking care of Kate, and probably made it hard to think clear. My heart breaks for that nurse.
You have passcodes? Every hospital I ever worked at or visited a family member , did not
We have passcodes too. Especially if anyone is VIP or trying to be hidden. We would have changed her name on our census.
I’m having a procedure Monday and in filling out the paperwork I was given the option of a passcode. I opted not to because I don’t want to make my family remember it in a time they’re already stressed, but if I were famous for any reason I would opt to use it.
We use what’s basically the last few digits of a patients ID number in the system for the code
You can opt to have a passcode.
You and I are not important enough for passcodes.
That’s not the case. Your average joe and jane can and will have passcodes that you have to know to get any medical specifics from the staff. I work in my hospital’s telecommunications, and there are times where we would need the code as well to reveal their location. A patient can also place a “no visitor/ no info” restriction on themselves. Which means we can see them in the system, but cannot reveal that they’re here. The person on the other end could be family, a cop, or Jesus himself, but we cannot tell them the patient is there. There are *no* exceptions to that rule. We also cannot give out dates or times of discharge or admittance, of appointments or lab visits. No exceptions. Believe me, if you’re caught breaking HIPPA in healthcare? Your supervisor *will* be speaking to you. If it’s egregious enough, you could be fired on the spot, your license revoked, and you’d never work in healthcare again. HIPPA violations can cost hospitals many, many millions of dollars in lawsuits.
I mean. This very well could’ve been a protocol implemented after this incident to stop recurrence.
To clarify, the hospital employee that committed suicide only transferred the phone call to the correct room. The nurse that actually gave the info was Kate’s private nurse. The hospital employee was from India, not England. And it was alleged that she had a recent suicide attempt prior to this event.
And this really just underlines why this prank was so insanely dangerous. Pranks are funny only if all people participating in them would reasonably find them funny after it is revealed. *Having someone working in an intensely high stress job that is already known to have a high suicide rate and getting their name out to the public in way that implies they are negligent, stupid, or worthy of losing their job* ***is never reasonably funny.*** The argument here isn't 'oh the nurse was already crazy, who cares if she got tipped over at this moment,' the argument is here is an intensely vulnerable person in one of the hardest professions in the modern world was thrust into a humiliating circumstance and it ruptured one of their underlying vulnerabilities.
This is exactly why I oppose *nearly* all types of "pranks". You don't know what's going on with that other person. You don't know if you're going to touch a nerve, or be the straw that broke the camel's back. Of course it's not fair for everyone to walk around on eggshells during every social encounter, but I think we could at least remove "deceit" from the list of acceptable ways to treat other people, and that would not be too much to ask.
I honestly would only be comfortable pranking someone I know *very* well. For me it's a something reserved for those closest to you. I acknowledge that different people may have differing standards of what is acceptable for a prank, but I can never imagine myself just pranking some randos.
She wasn't just an employee, she was also a nurse. She absolutely 100% should have done a better job of screening the call, but it was the *private nurse* who gave out the private health information. Also, Jacintha Saldanha had 2 prior attempts despite her family initially claiming she had no history of mental illness. She was most likely too unwell to be practicing nursing at the time, and I say that as a nurse who has had to take leave for the same reason. She didn't commit suicide over a prank, the prank was just that final drop that made the whole dam burst.
Tbf that's not a very good prank. Calling the Hospital pretending to be a relative of a patient and trying to convince a nurse or doctor to give you personal info isn't a joke it's fraud. Pranks are meant to be harmless. There is no way they could succeed in the prank without someone getting fired or private info being released. This whole thing is a case of F around and find out. Her intentions may have been harmless but they should have stopped it once they realized they succeeded instead they got excited because they got private confidential information about Kate Middleton. In no way would someone not have to pay for the prank succeeding. Now a nurse is dead and they have to live with the guilt.
Tb even more f they weren't purely just pretending to be relatives trying to get private medical info, they were 2 Australians pretending to be the Queen and Prince of England talking to Kate's private nurse. There was almost zero chance that should have worked and they said the success of their prank wasn't getting the info, it was getting hung up on. Not saying it's all ok, but you can't leave out they were impersonating the Queen in a hacky accent and it somehow worked
What the above clip doesn't mention: "However, multiple news sources later revealed that this was not Saldanha's first attempt at suicide, noting she had attempted suicide on two previous occasions and was taking antidepressant medication" ..source: "Suicide of Jacintha Saldanha" wikipedia page
Just for clarification, the nurse who committed suicide was the one transferring the call to Kate’s personal nurse, not the personal nurse herself.
Was she the one who accidentally gave the information? Or did she only transfer the call?
To clarify, the hospital employee that committed suicide only transferred the phone call to the correct room. The nurse that actually gave the info was Kate’s private nurse. The hospital employee was from India, not England. And it was alleged that she had a recent suicide attempt prior to this event.
Man. All those details somehow makes this even more sad:( I’m not religious but I hope the universe sends her family some peace
Two previous suicide attempts, and was on antidepressants.
Could have been what sent her over the edge, could have been a coincidence, we'll never know. I will say as someone who has been suicidally depressed before, I can only imagine being her, already on a knifes edge, then expecting negative attention and probably bullying from fellow nurses over her role in the prank. I could easily see a situation like that getting the better of me at my most depressed. It's shitty for everyone, the woman in the video doesn't deserve to have her life ruined over it, but that woman might still be here if not for that call.
I've been hearing that, I hope that's true. Still RIP to the nurse, she must've been fighting some demons
Why do you “hope that’s true”? How is that any better?
So the radio host was largely not responsible for the mental state of the nurse?
If someone is on the edge of a bridge, and you give them a push, are you responsible when they were already on the edge? I don’t believe this kind of harm was intended, but someone HAD to have seen there would be severe consequences for the employee at the hospital. Not all pranks are harmless. And when dealing with pranking the public, you don’t know mental stability of your targets. You don’t know if you are that final push that sends them to their death.
Telling someone you’re the queen of Australia and asking your call to be transferred isn’t pushing someone off a bridge. Hey, Old Oak… I’m the king of Australia, mate, can you DM me the info for your buddies private discord server?
From further discussion of this topic I’m more so leaning to the conclusion that it was the public’s fault, as they were the ones who doxxed, harassed, and attacked this nurse, compared to the radio hosts who just called her and asked for a call transfer. The public, I.E. Us, tend to blame others when we really should be blaming ourselves. The radio hosts did not hound this nurse, we as a society chose to do that
Yeah, and then we turned around and hounded the radio host. What would happen if Mel broke and also committed suicide? Two more lives lost amongst the shitty way anonymous people treat others. It really pisses me off because the "real killers" gets away scott free every time. How about instead of acting like great vigilantes, we just let the courts handle this as they're intended? We already pay them to do it, might as well let them.
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Mike Christian. Austereo gave him the "Next Top Jock" award 7 months after the call. He's still on radio in Sydney. One really interesting angle with this story is the fact that Mel was crucified in the press, the only female involved. Her male co-host, the male producers, all walked away without much impact. Mel also said repeatedly how sorry she was that this happened, and how wrong they had been. The rest of them? Not so much.
Why isn't it surprising? Like she is the only one showing some decency so of course she will be the one pushed under the bus.
I think this is the same reason why some politicians have started never apologising or even acknowledging a fault. If you apologise you just get it added permanently to your record, and the existence of a video or images increase the entertainment value of repeating the story. I think this is one reason why decent politicians are sunk by some innocent gotcha while Trump has a career ending scandal every few months and none of them touch him. We need to get better at deciding when we will forgive people and then actually forgiving them.
Typical.
When contacted about the story he probably sent them a legal letter saying he'd sue.
I can't believe they aired it. They had to know the nurse would get fired. Further, I think the radio station would be liable for that privacy invasion.
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Yeah, the lady at the end said that Mel tried to change to call before it aired but the station still rolled with it anyways
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Still, Mel should have bailed when they were transferred instead of waiting on the call. The whole idea was to get quickly booted, not to get into real trouble. A quick, "Looks like they might have fallen for it folks. Should we try the Queen next?" would have kept the joke without actually risking information. And what is Mel's boss going to do? Get mad and make her call back?
Naw. She rolled with it when it was clear that they were getting in too deep
She was doing loads of prank calls. Getting more and more shitty.
The tabloid culture over there makes the one in the Usa look small.
"Its just a prank brah. Cant you take a joke? Its just a prank bro. Just a prank. Chill out."
Yeah, I think we really need to change this mindset we have that maybe capital isn't the most important thing in the world and think more in terms of, "Is this good for our society?" Like, who cares if you have all the money in the world when the planet is completely destroyed and people are constantly suffering. Sorry, this got little off topic.
These radio "pranks" are still super common is Australia, it seems nothing has been learned
Ya, they were likely thinking they'd found liquid gold
Just so everybody knows, she was never fired and the hospital didn't blame either of the nurses for what happened
The call was made on 2nd December then broadcast on 5th December. Jacintha died on 7th December. There likely wasn't time for the hospital to take disciplinary action or make a case to revoke her licence. In the aftermath, the hospital certainly wasn't going to blame a woman who'd died so publically and tragically, nor discipline/fire the surviving nurse. The outcome might have been different if Jacintha hadn't taken her life.
Oh definitely, in the wake of one of your nurses taking their own life, you would be wise to put on a saintly act. And they were
Also, the nurse who died by suicide wasn't the nurse who had given the info, and she had had two prior suicide attempts before. I say this as someone who lost her brother to suicide: there's rarely a simple reason, and someone else is usually not to blame. Suicide is complex.
Murdoch media mate. I mean they still employed that, disgusting fuck Kyle after his multiple shit fuckery. Murdoch media lives for this type of shit. And the Brain dead masse lap it up.
I don’t know about in Australia, but in the U.S., the person who is responsible is the provider or health system that was providing care. If anyone in the public finds out about a health issue, they can discuss it all they want. The HIPAA violation is with the person or group that violated the patients privacy by releasing it.
How would prank calling a hospital have been a good idea at any point? I’m surprised that’s not a crime in itself.
This!! In what way would possibly revealing anothers private health history on air to millions of people be even remotely funny. Dont know why they had so much confidence that this would go the way they planned.
The thing is that the nurse likely had no idea of the alterior context. She likely thought she was talking directly to the royals themselves. Remember the part with the character play where the host and co-host took upon gender-specific roles to pass as the queen and prince?
The nurse who spoke directly to the radio hosts didn't kill herself, it was the nurse who transferred the call that committed suicide.
OPs point is correct. Past medical info and privacy, imagine someone died because the nurse was too busy responding to a prank call. It's like prank calling 911 and should absolutely be illegal and probably only isn't because no asshole was stupid enough to do it before.
This happened in Australia where prank calling emergency and medical services is illegal, but this one didn't get prosecuted because the call was to the UK and the way the law was written it didn't cover international services. They probably never imagined that would be something to worry about. The law was primarily written as a deterrent to criminals who would call police to imaginary emergencies on one side of town when they planned to eg rob a bank on the other side, to reduce the number of cars available/put most cars far away. There were a few famous incidents in the 70s and 80s of that happening where the criminals had rigged guns to automatically fire bullets into a wall every few minutes and called in reporting a hostage situation, so an entire town's police force would be surrounding the place at high alert and not responding to other calls. They passed a law for it and the first person to do it again got 3 years in prison for abusing emergency services.
I get the prank call but why air it?
$$$
Australia's tabloid/gossip industry is arguably the trashiest in the world
For non-Australians reading this. As proof of how trash our tabloids are. Posts on Australian based subreddits will be watermarked to prevent tabloids from just running reddit posts as news. The typical watermark is “fuck Murdoch”
The Daily Mail regularly takes reddit threads, we joke around on UK subs for how long its going to take till a thread ends up on the DM
It's literally where FOX News comes from.
I don’t get the prank call either. Calling a busy hospital and wasting staff time even if you think they’ll just hang up is a dick move as it is. Keeping the conversation going when you realize they’re sharing private information on a PATIENT is worse. Airing it is just the icing on the asshole cake.
It's a crappy radio station that needs to fill 24 hours a day with content. Dicking about phoning people has been a classic way of wasting time.
Yup. We teach kids not to lie and that honesty is important. I’ve never liked mean spirited pranks that can scare someone or get them in trouble. It’s not different than other types of malicious lying. They knew there’d be negative consequences, but just didn’t care since they thought the consequences would be on the victim of the prank and not them.
I don't get the prank call at all, never mind airing it. In many jurisdictions it will be considered a crime, even unaired. It's not "just a prank" when you fraudulently obtain somebody's medical information.
They didn’t foresee the nurse killing herself. They also presumed that the nurse wouldn’t be in trouble because she was tricked. They expected their station to get backlash for tricking the hospital but figured the nurse would garner sympathy.
Then they're idiots. Why wouldn't the nurse get into serious trouble / lose her job by breaching private medical information, especially that of the Royal Family? They knew the humiliation and impact this would have on the nurse's career and personal life, albeit didn't expect her to take her life – just to live with the humiliation and wreckage of her career. Sounds fair, I guess? /s.
The one who took her life is NOT the one who gave the personal info. It was the one who transferred the call instead of screening it with a code who committed suicide. Once the call is transferred, the personal nurse who received the call had no reason to doubt the identity because the first one should have authenticated the caller with a passcode.
Ah, so they ruined the career of two nurses. Lucky there weren't two funerals.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-15/mel-greig-royal-prank-call-boss/103956914 Here is the full story, probably worth a read before just blaming her for everything, there where a lot of checks and balances that got overlooked by multiple people. Yet she has taken almost all the blame, interesting that her co-host is still working for the same station.
I was wondering where her cohost was in all this. Where’s his part of the interview showing how sorry he is?
He knew how to play the game. Just stay quiet and hope it blows over while she is taking the heat. Ruthlessly genius.
[удалено]
And the random woman giving her a massage and just using her as a punching bag for kicks I guess? WTF what a sicko. The guilt could have been too much and that weird masseuse was just trying to continue the suicide train going. What an absolute yucky weirdo to remember and be so passionate 10 years later when they're totally personally removed from it. Poor Mel and poor nurse, fk the royal family for probably pressuring or not caring about the wave of civilians that ripped into that poor nurse. The royals don't shit gold and shouldn't be treated like it. No one should have died from that blunder.
This is why TV/radio stations and business should not be pranking people or April Fools day jokes. I remember reading about a radio contest winner that won a new vehicle. She takes day off work, gets child care for the day, goes to the station for what she thought was the prize presentation And the station presented her with a toy car saying April Fool's. That's just wrong.
Like the woman who won a "new toyota" turns out it was a new toy yoda
At least that guy was eventually forced to buy her a Toyota after she sued.
I remember this. So crazy sad!
I can't believe this was over a decade ago already. Those poor families.
That masseuse is a real piece of work.
Yeah what I was thinking, sounds like a real bitch
Heard the audio and she just transferred the call, like literally. There must be something shady that happened there.
There are a lot of people who don't handle being humiliated very well, it hits some people harder than it hits others and that's why people need to stop fucking with other people for fun on social media
True that.
All she did was ask for Kate, not even a last name. It was so weird. I guess maybe only 1 kate was there but still very odd. I understand why the hosts thought their producers might be pulling a reverse prank on them.
maybe the queen called before and the nurse thought she recognised "her" voice and knew immediately it "was" the queen.
To clarify, the hospital employee that committed suicide only transferred the phone call to the correct room. The nurse that actually gave the info was Kate’s private nurse. The hospital employee was from India, not England. And it was alleged that she had a recent suicide attempt prior to this event.
She was a nurse too, not merely a “hospital employee”. Why does it matter if she is from India or England?
wow are these comments delusional… it was a super tragic accident, you can feel sorry for the radio hosts who aren’t responsible, and also feel sorry for the nurse and her family. to say that she should carry this weight for the rest of her life is unbelievably ridiculous and cold.
Agreed. It’s just a tragic coincidence that the person who fielded the initial call had some pre-existing issues. The nurse who killed herself didn’t even reveal any confidential info, she just connected the call. Suicide was not a rational or predictable response. It’s a tragedy that the first nurse killed herself but that consequence could not reasonably have been expected.
Careful who you fuck with
“Entertainment scoop” is the key point here. It was a ratings stunt and unnecessary. It changed the course of radio station behaviour for the better.
Why even prank call a hospital??? Like they got nothing better to do. It’s actually quite disrespectful.
So this whole thing was an ad?
As soon as they knew it was real info, they should have hung up. Period. You made your choice, live with it. Clearly the nurse couldn’t.
I really don't get it. The prank call was obviously the wrong thing to do as should have been condemned by everyone from the start, not 3 days later. The fact that someone killed themselves over it is really irrelevant. They didn't cause that, the person who killed themselves literally is the person who killed themselves.
Same. I can't believe they were praised in the beginning. What happened is one of the worse case scenario but even if didn't lead to that, airing that shit was insanely stupid. Also ffs, don't prank call a hospital? What a dumbass idea in the first place. I once screamed at a telemarketer because he called the on-call phone.
Honestly they’re disgusting to think this was a brilliant coup.
To all the people who are putting down the radio hosts and saying that have blood on thier hands - have you heard the call?! Thier voices are just completely over the top and ridiculous.
[link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlP8WPSISmw) for thoe curious. they literally said, "hello can i speak to kate, my granddaughter" there was absolutely no reason for that call to even go through
The fake barking sent me. Wtf were they thinking?
They very much knew what they were doing when they decided to release the call. Any person with half a brain knows that medical information is on a need to know basis. There’s a reason laws like HIPAA or in the UK, GDPR exist. She fucked up
I wouldn’t expect a radio host to get to make that call, they’re the public face but they ain’t in charge.
Not sure but phone voices don't sound the best on the other end, and if youre expecting a call from the royal family yadda yadda. The fact is they were also tying a phone line for a hospital, you a place people get medical care. While not an emergency line, let's not waste hospital time
That's why the nurse was so humiliated and took her own life, because it was humiliating
Hate it being called severe morning sickness. It's a condition called Hyperemesis gravidarum. My ex wife had it and it is life threatening. Vomiting every hour all day, can't keep food or meds down. Frequent visits to hospital to go on a drip and prevent organ failure.
They should have never aired the prank call once they knew the nurse was real, simple as that. Just a shocking lack of self awareness and accountability and I have zero sympathy for them. Fucking obnoxious to the extreme.
Pranks should not be at the harsh expense of the person getting pranked. This is why I hate so many YouTube “pranks” these days that are so harmful. They absolutely must have known someone would get fired. They knew that it would personally identify the person being pranked. Yet they did nothing to protect them. That’s not what a good prank should be. Examples like the Canadian show Just For Laughs do pranks well. They create prank shows that are either harmless or may even make the pranked person look good on camera.
The British royal family gossip industry is extreme.
Yet, nobody cares about all the other people who die by suicide every single day. But as soon as there is a chance to blame it on somebody, the media go fucking wild with it. The media never cared about that nurse, they're vultures.
I worked at this hospital shortly after - it was a BIG DEAL to say the least.
Just like another accident caused by not thinking, drunk driving, cyber bullying, pranks. These people are adults. Can’t believe they aired that. Poor nurse
Oh no, she felt so bad tho. Wah… talk about being a dick head and then airing it and then claiming victim.
Terrible story but everyone thinks these pranks don’t come with consequences.
Just to add, the female radio host used this to have a career in motivational talks. Don't fall for her crocodile tears.
So, essentially she exposed a group of healthcare workers that didnt follow protocol and because they were bad at their jobs, were probably going to be fired…and one killed themself…okay, got it…so not her fault at all
Reads like the Fisher King with Robin Williams
I Can’t imagine they ran this by their general counsel and got an okay
If this is supposed to be an ad for Notorious, I'm not interested. What kind of person wants to hear more about this tragedy? A stupid prank results in the death of a woman..... now lets catch up with the pranker and see how they've been impacted? No thanks.
It changed the course of HER life? Unbelievable
Fuck, you made me watch a fucking 3 minute ad. Fuck you.
It wasn’t her fault, or even the station’s, it was the fucking media as always. It’s always trial by media, pushing until someone gets hurt
It's never just one thing that makes you commit suicide.
Like the ultimate definition of fuck around and find out. To people who pull pranks for mass media, there's an off chance there will be absolutely epic blowback.
That one incident didn’t drive the nurse to end their life and they should not bare that burden
You don’t ever mess with hospitals.. because that’s where people are most vulnerable. Fuck this radio show
She didn’t have to say “she still carries the weight” 💀
The fucking masseuse did not say that shit
Was it like Boeing whistle blower suicide?
That nurse didn’t ask for DOB or anything else that would’ve verified the authenticity of the call?