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Radio hosts in Duchess Kate hoax tear up, apologize
2Day FM radio station signage outside station's building in Sydney on Dec. 8, 2012. / GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty Images
SYDNEY, AustraliaThe Australian radio hosts behind a hoax phone call to the U.K. hospital where the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge was staying said through tears on Monday they were shattered upon learning that the nurse who was duped by their prank had died.
2DayFM radio DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, who have faced worldwide fury over the hoax, spoke publicly about the prank for the first time in a televised interview with Australia's "A Current Affair." A separate interview on rival show "Today Tonight" also aired Monday evening.
Nurse Jacintha Saldanha answered the phone last week when the pair, impersonating Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, called the hospital where the former Kate Middleton was being treated for acute morning sickness. She transferred the call to a fellow nurse caring for the duchess, who gave the DJs confidential information about the Duchess's medical condition, which was broadcast on air.
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Three days later, Saldanha died. Police have not yet determined the 46-year-old's cause of death, but many immediately assumed it was related to the stress from the call. Greig and Christian have been taken off the air indefinitely.
The radio hosts apologized on Monday for the hoax and both broke down in tears when asked about the moment they learned Saldanha was dead.
Prince William visits Kate at the hospital
"There's not a minute that goes by that we don't think about her family and what they must be going through," Greig said, voice shaking. "And the thought that we may have played a part in that is gut-wrenching."
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."
Can you spot Kate's baby bump?
The decision to air the prerecorded call was made by executives higher up the chain, the DJs said.
Rhys Holleran, CEO of 2DayFM's parent company, Southern Cross Austereo, 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 said the station had tried at least five times to contact the hospital to discuss the prank before it went to air.
The call has sparked outrage across the globe, 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.
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We have become a blood thirsty society for us to see the pain of others in order for us to forget our own anguish. We have forgot the teachings; "Do unto others as you wish to have done unto you". Let's start realizing this simple message. Unfortunately we have gone past the point of decency in order to get increased status for being funny at the expense of others or actions of profanity .
The heading can instead mention the Duchess of Cambridge, or Princess Kate, or Princess Catherine.
Or it can legitimately identify her merely as Kate or Catherine, because the context "Radio hosts" and "hoax" will tell the readers which person of either of those two names is being talked about.
Don't worry: I'll give this story a rest now. :-)
The station's habits are inherently dangerous and have always asked for trouble.
The danger lurked just as much in the hoax phonecall to the student as it did 15 years later in the hoax phonecall to the hospital. Yet after the 1997 phonecall the paper-tiger Australian Communications Media Authority cutely permitted the station to keep its broadcasting licence and, as far as I've managed to discover, stopped short of ordering it, under pain of losing its licence, not to dupe innocent people in such a childish way again.
Neither the late Jacintha Saldanha nor Catherine's nurse in the hospital gave or was invited to give any such consent, so the case against Sydney's 2Day FM seems to be open and shut.
Regardless of the meddlesome and deceitful impersonation-hoax ingredient in this episode, the perpetually adolescent boys and girls in that bottom-dwelling outfit need to abandon their mischievous and dangerous habit of importuning people without telling them that the conversation is being recorded or even going direct to air, or they should be seen to be instrumental in the loss of the station's licence to broadcast.
Habit? That's what it is, and it goes back years (dear readers, please look it up), always evading the *****-cat Australian Communications and Media Authority's nuclear option of removing the station's licence.
I suppose that the credentials of the station's owner, Southern Cross Austereo, are another matter.
Anyway, a UK inquest---and, I trust, a similarly probing investigation in Australia---should especially dwell on any interactions that occurred between Jacintha and her hospital-related peers or seniors after the phonecall but before she died. The story may well reveal an example of the UK's old "r" trouble.
Dear bot, I was trying to refer to the ACMA's paper-tiger nature.
Let's hear it for premoderation, of for better bots. :-)
Holleran sounds like he is trying to blame the hospital for his radio station's juvenile prank. I expect juveniles to pull such cruel pranks, that is how they learn to become responsible adults. Holleran needs to grow up and his station should be shut down.
Surely the grieving family is relieved the station "followed procedure" and broke no laws.
That being said, I do think it should be illegal to try to solicit medical information about someone, prank or not.
We had a local incident some time back where a famous singer was in a tourbus accident, and the hospital screened and rebuffed numerous curiosity seekers tryng to call in.
Yes it would be good to have positive energy turned into something good, but we also need to realize how to prevent this in the first place.
Remember an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.