10:44 am - 12/10/2012
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.
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SOURCE
Kate hoax call DJs tearfully apologize; Kate still ill
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.
( More under the cut...Collapse )
SOURCE
Like, I see how they sort of tied it together in the article, but...
maybe they were trying to differentiate this post from the one a little while ago...?
shouldn't they get the blame too?
"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."
Ehh, I don't know about that. If that was the case, they wouldn't have called the hospital and spoken to actual people outside the show.
For example, my local station did something similar (making fun of this prank call situation--before someone died over it obviously) where they said they had gotten the number of the hospital from one of their London radio contacts that they'd met while covering the Olympics. They called it, but it actually just rang into the studio of the woman who reads the news, and she pretended to be one nurse, then transferred it over to the female producer, who pretended to be Kate herself. In that case, the joke was the girls' terrible English impressions and accents, topped off with the producer as Kate reading a funny list of things Kate planned to do that day.
If the joke was meant to be the DJ's terrible accents, etc, it would have been a situation where they called people they had hired to pretend to be working at the hospital.
No excuse to prank call a hospital or air it after they came through, but that argument I buy.
And with the amount of stress nurses are under at the moment, this was probably the last thing anyone working on that ward needed.
I mean have any of you had lives turned upside down by a serious loss, trauma, etc.? One day you can be fine and the next you're entertaining thoughts of suicide. Usually in these cases with time a person recovers, but not if they actually kill themselves.
I don't know, I just sort of find it a little insensitive that so many people are like, "she must have had other problems." It sort of undermines the pain and humiliation that she was experiencing.
You don't know how big crises can shake someone up and cause them to go into a tailspin they can't pull out of.
I can't believe people are quick to say "She must have been depressed and this just pushed her over the edge." "People don't kill themselves over prank calls. She must have had a mental illness."
People reacted to situations differently.
It doesn't matter if the kid was already upset beforehand. If it was you that made them snap then you are part of it and the biggest maybe.
all these ontd psychologists in these posts....
uh what?