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Australian DJs Apologize Over Nurse’s Death Following Royal Hoax — But Should They Be Blamed?

Dec. 10, 2012 7:56am Billy Hallowell

SYDNEY (TheBlaze/AP) — They expected a hang-up and a few laughs. Instead, the Australian DJs behind a hoax phone call to the U.K. hospital where the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge was treated were in tears Monday as they described how their joke ended up going too far.

The phone call — in which they impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles – went through, and their station broadcast and even trumpeted the confidential information received. Whatever pride there had been over the hoax was obliterated in a storm of worldwide public outrage after Friday’s death, still unexplained, of the first nurse they talked to.

“There’s not a minute that goes by that we don’t think about her family and what they must be going through,” 2DayFM radio host Mel Greig told Australia’s “A Current Affair,” her voice shaking. “And the thought that we may have played a part in that is gut-wrenching.”

She and co-host Michael Christian spoke publicly about the prank for the first time in the televised interview. A separate interview on rival show “Today Tonight” also aired Monday evening.

Mel Greig & Michael Christian Apologize Following Nurses Death

In this image made off video footage recorded Monday, Dec. 10, 2012 and aired later in the day in “A Current Affair” program by Australia’s Channel Nine, Australian radio DJs Michael Christian, left, and Mel Greig appear during an interview with the TV station. (AP Photo/Channel Nine)

Both DJs apologized for the hoax and broke down in tears when asked about the moment they learned that the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, was dead. But neither described having reservations before the hoax tape was broadcast; they said higher-ups made the decision to air it.

“We didn’t have that discussion,” Greig said.

Southern Cross Austereo, the parent company of 2DayFM, released a statement on Monday saying Greig and Christian’s show had been terminated, and that there would be a company-wide suspension of prank calls. The DJs themselves remain suspended.

Saldanha, 46, had transferred their call last week to a fellow nurse caring for the duchess, who was being treated for acute morning sickness. That nurse said the former Kate Middleton “hasn’t had any retching with me and she’s been sleeping on and off.”

Three days later, Saldanha died. Police have not yet determined the cause of death, but many immediately assumed it was related to the stress from the call.

Below, watch the “Today Tonight” interview:

The DJs said that when the idea for the call came up in a team meeting, no one expected that they would actually be put through to the duchess’ ward.

“We just assumed we’d get cut off at every single point and that’d be it,” Christian said.

“The joke 100 percent was on us,” he said. “The idea was never, `Let’s call up and get through to Kate,’ or `Let’s speak to a nurse.’ The joke was our accents are horrible, they don’t sound anything like who they’re intended to be.”

“The entertainment value was in us,” Greig added. “It was meant to be in our silly accents. That’s where it was meant to end.”

The decision to air the prerecorded call was made by executives higher up the chain, the DJs said.

Southern Cross Austereo CEO Rhys Holleran has called Saldanha’s death a tragedy, but defended the prank as a standard part of radio culture. He has also insisted the station had not broken any laws and had adhered to procedures.

On Monday, Holleran told Fairfax Radio that the station had tried at least five times to contact the hospital to discuss the prank before it went to air, though the station never succeeded.

When asked why the company made the attempts, Holleran replied, “Because we did want to speak with them about it.” When pressed as to whether this meant the station had reservations about the prank, Holleran said only, “I think that that’s a process that we follow and we have checks and balances on all those things.”

The hoax has sparked broad outrage, with the hosts receiving death threats and calls for them to be fired. Greig said she doesn’t even want to think about returning to the airwaves.

“I remember my first question was, `Was she a mother?’” she said on “Today Tonight.”

Saldanha had two children. Her husband, Ben Barboza, expressed his sadness on his Facebook page with a short note “Obituary Jacintha.”

“I am devastated with the tragic loss of my beloved wife Jacintha in tragic circumstances,” he wrote. He said she will be laid to rest in Shirva, India.

What do you think about this tragic case? Should the DJs be blamed for the woman’s tragic death? Take our poll, below:

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Related:

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Comments (66)

BACKUPOFFMYLIBERTY
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 11:14am
Not their fault. It was probably a culmination of things. Had prior issues. Still, so sad.

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- YouCantExplainThat
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 12:58pm
  Agreed. The real issue here is people with mental and emotional issues. They need help. A normal healthy individual does not commit suicide for any reason.
  
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- iig
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 2:49pm
  This is why pulling certain pranks is such a bad idea: you may be dealing with someone who is mentally or emotionally fragile, and your actions are the straw that breaks their back. So yes, they are responsible for providing the tipping point. Proximate cause. So instead of stubbornly insisting that we, society, the people around the event, are completely blameless, we save a lot more lives if we would snap out of denial and identify how we contribute to suffering, so we can change it. When society as a whole decides X is no longer tolerable, the individuals learn quickly and comply. How many people do radio station stunts have to kill before we make them stop it? Remember the water poisoning stunt?
  
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- SocialistSlayer
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 5:38pm
  This is not sad – These DJ’s did the world a favor – One less Psycho Nurse in the World !
  
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- SocialistSlayer
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 5:40pm
  I say we dig up that “Candid Camera Guy” and put him on trial – if he’s found guilty let’s hang the B’Tard like the pranking criminal he is !
  
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- zorro
  Posted on December 11, 2012 at 9:21am
  Sometimes people do stupid things and no one gets hurt. Other times, people do stupid things and people get hurt. Frankly, I find “prank calls” childish but harmless. But unfortunately, when you prank strangers, you simply don’t know how they will react. For this reason, you shouldn’t do it.
  
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tucsonjefe
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 11:12am
My question is about the hospital. Do they have a policy concerning celebrity guests? In most places here there is a protocol to screen for just such things as this. Patient privacy must be taken seriously at an institutional level, providing a means to identify authentic family or professionall communications. Apparently this hospital had no such policy, or the switchboard and the nurse ignored it completely. If blame must be delegated, how about the systemic failure that let this call get to this poor nurse in the first place.

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TheRancher
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 11:05am
A mother of two small children kills herself for letting a call get through? R U Kidding Me? I don’t believe that Bull(cough) for a second. A mother abandons her children hammering a spike of anguish through their little hearts for the rest of their lives and deals a crushing life changing blow to her husband because she let a prank call get through???

No way.

I don’t know what happened, but I do not believe she killed herself over a phone call. If she did I’d hazard she had other severe emotional problems.

AND BTW – where were the Palace-Minders? In this age of paparazi-nazis you want me to believe the Palace failed to send along someone to mind the affairs and details of the future Royalty of England? Really? REALLY??

This ‘story’ has bull(cough) written all over it.

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HOLYSMOKES
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 11:04am
Maybe Bob Costas can give us a lecture about how pranks can kill and that we should have stricter prank control. Seriously, I feel sorry for the nurse but killing herself over a prank says more about her than about the DJ’s.The DJ’s have zero responsibility and shouldn’t be blubbering all over the place. The world is truly upsidedown

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- YouCantExplainThat
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 12:59pm
  Prank calls and guns are not equivalent.
  
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Valuable
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:53am
No they should not be blamed!!! That’s insane!!!! Someone above posted that the RN was from India and perhaps there is a cultural reason behind her reaction. I know that some Indians embrace the “shaming” of your family or culture is the very worst thing that you can do. She not have that view at all but was dealing with others things and this was the last straw. Either way, the RN did not have healthy coping skills and opted for the very worst of any of the options that she had. It is sad!!

The DJ’s are the ones who are getting persecuted for a doing their shock jock jobs. Very sad.

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guz75
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:45am
The DJ’s can’t be absolved of any responsibility. Obviously they wouldn’t have broadcast the prank had they known someone would die, but the fact that they got legal advice before broadcasting it, would suggest they must have thought carefully about the consequences.

Surely it would have occurred to them that the two people responsible for giving them confidential information about a member of the royal family, might wind up in trouble with their employer, but they went ahead and broadcast it anyway.

I also doubt anyone commenting here has ever found themselves in a position where their professional reputation has been damaged, in a humiliating way and then, more importantly, that mistake has been spread across newspapers, television and the internet world wide. I don’t think anyone can say with authority how that would affect someone that takes a lot of pride in what they do.

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right field
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:06am
Odd coincidence – nothing more – The call was not malicious or threatening – It was stupid, silly, ‘entertainment gone wild’ ridiculous nonsense – but the woman’s death was certainly not “caused” by the phone call. There are dozens of television shows on everyday that do nothing but “prank or punk” people –
Remember Allen Funt and Candid Camera – He began the show on ABC Radio in 1946 as Candid Microphone. This type of stunt has been going on in entertainment programming for a long, long time.

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- Hotrod25
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:15am
  Exactly right! I wonder if the media would have had the same response if Ashton Kutcher had yelled out….YOU’VE JUST BEEN PUNKED…over the line. Maybe they should cancel that show since someone could get their feelings hurt and kill theirself. Then that would make PUNKED a hate organization.
  
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- AvengerK
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:48am
  Agreed….they have nothing to apologise for. These kinds of radio pranks are common place and amount to nothing. They should simply be offering their condolences and asking for the woman’s family to consult experts about mental illness, depression..etc to understand what has taken place.
  
  Having said that….I’m not buying the DJ’s version for one second. This whole..”we thought they’d hang up..we never expected to actually get through” line is horse dung. They wanted to take it as far as it would go and it went all the way. But they didn’t know Saldanha would be of an unstable mind to commit suicide over it. Enough of the fakery.
  
  It is my understanding that their show has been taken off the air as of right now. For some perspective their station 2DAY FM is a very innocuous pop station not anything along the lines of a Howard Stern type of operation.
  
  Report this comment
- Kregneva
  Posted on December 11, 2012 at 7:05am
  Who made you an expert on 2012 Australian so-called pop station disk jockeys? Are you living in Australia? Are you a foreign visitor to the United States? Are you quoting Wikipedia to try and sound wizened? Or just playing your Aussie-sympathizer poser role today? Just looking for some perspective.
  
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cher.128
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 9:39am
No NORMAL person would even consider committing suicide because of a prank phone. People commit suicide because of deep depressions, chronic mental disorders, or unbearable physical pain.
This woman, (whom we know nothing about) was a ticking time bomb. If it were not the prank, there would have been another event that would have triggered her.
The DJ’s should NOT have disciplinary action. I’m sure they feel bad enough already. A sincere apology would suffice.

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- Hotrod25
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 9:49am
  Sounds a lot like the Bengazi thing to me. its the video, its the video HEY EVERYBODY LETS ALL PILE ON THE VIDEO AND THE MAN THAT MADE IT. HE CAUSED THE DEATH OF THE AMBASSADOR!……Now its all about the DJs HEY EVERYBODY LETS PILE ON THE DJS THEY CAUSED THAT WOMAN TO KILL HERSELF!…..Lesson—dont go along with the media narrative. Thats the best way in the world to wind up looking like a fool.
  
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- Hazzard
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:36pm
  It is undoubtedly illegal to impersonate the Head of State. Queen Elizabeth is the Australian and the UK Head of State. It is certainly in questionable taste to call a hospital and make a joke out of someone who is ill. The nurse was of Indian (country of) derivation and it may well be that a question of “face” is more important to them than say to morons who have no sensitivity and call hospitals pretending they are the Head of State finding it funny that someone is ill. They held the nurse up to world wide ridicule. Yet why ever should she have thought someone would find the Dutchess ailment to be funny. Hence she took the call at face value. Hyperemesis gravidarum was once a dying illness – Charlotte Bronte died in her four month of pregnancy from just this ailment. Illness is not a joke!
  
  The hospital has said they made no move to condemn her actions, however, it would seem that they may very well have had a great deal to say about actions that lead to the invadion of the privacy of the Duchess. In addition, let us recall please how the Duke feels about harrassement by the press over the death of his mother. Now what was to be a happy event has a very unfortunate saddness attached. All because two people lacked the sensitivity to understand that illness, hospitals and medical privacy do not summon up prank, hoax, levity etc in decent, caring human beings.
  
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RANGER1965
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 9:13am
It’s the new theme in today’s world.

(1) It’s not the murderer’s fault, it’s the gun, his parents, his economic status.
(2) It’s not your fault you’re fat, it’s the availability of fast food, it’s your glands.
(3) It’s not your fault you suicided, it’s because no one cares, the world is against you.

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Dismayed Veteran
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:56am
It was a prank. DJ’s do this all the time. There was no evil intent. The outcome was tragic. There is still explanation for the nurse’s death.

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- GhostOfJefferson
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 2:49pm
  Indeed. What bothers me is how fast the DJ’s caved to the absolutely bogus screams for their heads. Why does nobody stand their ground these days?
  
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no1hd
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:53am
Even the question is a joke, they should not even be off the air..This person that committed suicide had more problems than being told and definitely was in the wrong business..

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iamnotu
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:53am
This is just stupid, of course it didn’t have anything to do with her death! This is nothing but a witch hunt and it shows the ignorance of everyone by putting blame on these individuals.

Just like everything else that is hyped on the news these days, idiots come out of the woodwork, including talk show hosts, to speculate, postulate and convict people through the moronic rhetoric on social sites such as these.

Really, saying these people caused this nurse to off herself is as rediculous as last week saying the gun killed that football players baby momma!

Comon people, get real. This woman obviuosly had some real deep seeded issues as does anyone who takes their life. But to say that these DJ’s had somehow made her kill herself because she was duped is assinine!

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- davidwjohnson
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 9:34am
  Some will contend that pranks are another form of bullying.
  
  The DJs intentionally maligned this nurse in public, causing her emotional distress over the humiliation she perceived from the public, thus resulting in her actions.
  
  One could postulate the DJs should be charged with some form of bullying and be held culpable (civil, possibly criminal) in the nurse’s death.
  
  Report this comment
- andrew36
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:30pm
  David, they didnt malign anyone, the nurse that killed herself was the one who passed the call on to the nurses station, she wasnt the one that gave out the info. They were talking to her for a few seconds only. If anyone maligned the dead nurse it wa sthe press.
  
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TROONORTH
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:50am
We don’t even know why or if this poor person killed herself and we are blaming two radio personalities for the ‘crime’? This is yet another example of political correctness looking for someone to punish for a perceived non-pc offense. This poor lady, should she have killed herself over a phone call, was obviously mentally disturbed. She over reacted to a small practical joke.

That’s all.

The only thing that these two radio people are guilty of, is performing one of the worst impressions of ‘Her Majesty’ of all time. Everyone knows that ‘Her Maj’ doesn’t feed her Corgis personally. She has staff to do that.

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- Hazzard
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:44pm
  True North – the Queen DOES feed her corgis personally!
  
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SocialistSlayer
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:48am
I blame the Nurse – This is just absurd that people are blaming the DJ’s ! They pulled a harmless joke. For this woman to kill herself over something so trivial just defies logic. She must have had some serious emotional issues going on that made her unstable – in this case you can than the DJ’s for bring this out before she also took the lives of others around her.

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LogicandJustice
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:47am
It is called “Personal Responsibility”. If these two morons did not make the call, the nurse would still be alive, therefore they are personally responsible for her death. Anyone else that allowed or supported the “prank” is just as responsible.

You can never tell what will trigger a person to take their life, but bullies need to understand that there are consequences to their actions. And any of you that support this type of “joke” were porbably bullies yourselves.

They should fry for what they did.

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- iamnotu
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:55am
  Pure speculation dumb asz!
  And sure if these two people didn’t call she might have went on a tyranical killing spree murdering everone in the hopital.
  
  PUTZ!
  
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- GhostOfJefferson
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 4:20pm
  Ah, so nobody is responsible for his or her own actions. Got it, Mr. Marx. Thanks for contributing.
  
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- andrew36
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 10:38pm
  So therefore logic if they read your comment and decide to kill themselves you should be charged, you never know what might set someone off so you need to be careful right. By the way if the hospital didnt hire this woman she would be alive, so should they be charged. If William didnt get Kate pregnant the nurse would be alive, prince william should be charged with having sex. If the 2nd nurse hadnt given out info the story would have been a non issue and noone would have heard about it andthe first nurse wouldnt had killed herself, so the 2nd nurse should be charged.
  
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Lemacs
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:43am
If we did not have kings and queens in the world this would not of ever happened.

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christhefanatic
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:40am
Harmless joke gone awry. Either, the hospital has no protocol for incoming calls or this poor woman bi-passed hospital protocols. I heard part of the phone conversation and could hear nothing of any consequence. Can’t imagine that anything she revealed would be embarrassing to the royals.
If this lady is from India perhaps it is a cultural thing.
Don’t think the djs should be held responsible for this. The hospital should beef up security.

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Beachbaby
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:40am
Fake tears from fake people. The nurse was an obvious moron.

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Frederick_Douglass_Republican
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:40am
I have sympathy for the DJ’s but not as much sympathy as I have for the kids that wretch left behind.
The nurse had two kids who’s life she destroyed by murdering herself. The DJ’s who played a good prank primarily aimed at the dorky “royal” family are not to blame. Something else would have at some point been used as a scapegoat by the murderer. I have a special disdain for people who selfishly murder themselves leaving wreckage behind. Long ago I turned away from having sympathy for suicides. Too close to home. The victims in a suicide are the living left in the wake.

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paultard
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:31am
You’re kidding me right? You don’t take your life over something like this. OK it’s embarrassing but unless the queen murdered her and made it look like a suicide, (like Diana) maybe we have a story.
This looks fishy to me.

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blanco5
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:24am
No.

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chris72sax
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:20am
I feel sorry for the lady and her family, but she was obviously mentally ill. The rest of us shouldn’t have to stop living because we might say something that causes an unhinged person to do something bad or stupid. Harmless prank and I hope to see more in the future as long as they don’t continually harass people of interfere with business. A little perspective please!

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SamIamTwo
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:13am
Meh, whoever was involved should be shamed. JIMHO Management involved, eh? Mental hateful midgets. The prank calls are like bullying. haha so funny, NOT! Shock Jocks suck.

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- Stoic one
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:30am
  So .. no humor except your kind of humor?
  
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ares338
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:09am
No…this was just a joke ( maybe in poor taste) gone awry. Anyway, look at the joke we have for a president!

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- SamIamTwo
  Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:14am
  Try to prank him and you end up being whisked away to a far away cell along with the whistle-blowers.
  
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Wolf
Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:07am
It’s insane that people pulling a prank are convicted of a crime by the court of world opinion.

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