Baby News for Great Britain

[PatInTheHat]

I work with a lot of Indian people, and perhaps this is stereotyping on my part, but they really really take their work personally. They are very afraid of failure in any way. They put much more pressure on themselves than any other group I have worked with.

Back when everybody was runnin' for their lives about the Japanese buying up & taking our homeland over, I dealt with a purchasing department of a newly opened Japanese auto parts company in this little Hoobilly southern Indiana town I lived in, and they were just that way, industrious no nonsense everything in it's place lil' boogers they were too, never once had a problem gettin' payed, and on time.
Cool thing was some of them started hangin' out in the local joints and gettin' themselves all Americanized, I mean quite a few of 'em really learned how to kick back & chillbilly it out pretty quick, some even learned how to drink canned Bud & shoot a pretty mean pool stick, and this was well before Karaoke came to town...I think we can be like Valium to some of 'em, you know, one's what might be wound maybe just a wee tad too culturally uptight...hmm, or maybe it's I'd just like to think so.

[Neesy]

Atom - I couldn't agree more with what you are saying.

Todash - I almost agree with you but I think the DJ's were live. I think they probably would have feared for their jobs if they were on air and they were suddenly like, "Oops, we didn't actually think we'd get through, we were just joking!!" And then hung up. The lady who killed herself still would have put them through so it doesn't really matter.


Everyone - Am I the only one who doesn't think the DJ's were in the wrong? I'm sure all kinds of press was calling to find out how Kate was. Should we judge them less harshly if they are from NPR than from a radio shock show? I don't think so. I feel like they've had to suffer a whole lot for simply doing their job. They just happened to do it better than others and in a not so professional way. It wasn't their responsibility to screen their own calls.

People have to take responsibility for their own actions.

In my opinion you are not the only one who doesn't think the DJs were in the wrong. It was in poor taste and like they said they could not believe they got through. That is why I ended up not listening to the call. You have to put up with about a minute or so of these two bantering with each other with their very annoying accents (I thought they were loud) so I just clicked it off and gave up. I meant to listen to it later at home and never did.
They are very contrite now and have done a 360 in terms of how serious they look now compared to what a laugh riot it was earlier.

[Todash]

Atom - I couldn't agree more with what you are saying.

Todash - I almost agree with you but I think the DJ's were live. I think they probably would have feared for their jobs if they were on air and they were suddenly like, "Oops, we didn't actually think we'd get through, we were just joking!!" And then hung up. The lady who killed herself still would have put them through so it doesn't really matter.

I would be slightly less inclined to blame the radio station if, in fact, the call were live and they were just rolling with the flow. But it was prerecorded; supposedly they tried to contact the nurses to get permission to air the call several times. (Hint to radio stations: if you can't get permission, you don't air it.) And actually I feel that the blame lies significantly less with the DJs than with the management who decided to air the call; I doubt the DJs had any say in that once the call was recorded. They are just taking the heat, and if they are fired while management rolls along like fat, happy slugs, that's horrible and hypocritical.

Everyone - Am I the only one who doesn't think the DJ's were in the wrong? I'm sure all kinds of press was calling to find out how Kate was. Should we judge them less harshly if they are from NPR than from a radio shock show? I don't think so. I feel like they've had to suffer a whole lot for simply doing their job. They just happened to do it better than others and in a not so professional way. It wasn't their responsibility to screen their own calls.

People have to take responsibility for their own actions.

Yeah, but the thing is, if NPR called the hospital, which likely they wouldn't as they know that kind of information is confidential, they would represent themselves truthfully. These DJs represented themselves, in a rather clumsy fashion, as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. Full disclosure: I hate radio prank calls and feel that they are generally not funny, just juvenile and often really offensive; I read somewhere (discussing this) that shock jocks are the price we must pay for freedom of speech, and I agree with that observation. So I might not be neutral on this point.

I am sure that if it had entered the attention-seeking minds of the radio station management that their prank could end up in someone's death, they wouldn't have aired the call. So do I blame them for the death? No. But any thinking person could have predicted that airing that call very well could have resulted in the hospital personnel involved being fired, not to mention that airing the call involved exposing the private details of someone's personal health condition. This was ALWAYS going to go viral because it's about royalty, and the radio station thought they had hit a publicity gold mine. So no, I don't think they're murderers. Just selfish, grasping, juvenile, disgusting attention whores without a moment's concern for anyone else.

[Todash]

Warning, y'all: I'm feeling rather judgy today.

[Shasta]

Todash - I must confess that I got sick of this whole thing and stopped following so I didn't know that it was pre-recorded. I agree with you that it was indeed the wrong judgment call of airing it. In fact, the royals are handling it much more nicely than I would have if it were my privacy. But I still maintain they were just doing their jobs. And I do think it's unfortunate that people support this type of "job" but alas, they do. So someone has to do it.

If we think about it, I'm sure SK has been blamed for plenty of things over the years because he writes horror. (Please note that I do not know this, I am just speculating.) Some people have a distaste for horror and think it's the worst kind of entertainment - even offensive - but we clearly all love it or we wouldn't be here. I really think it's the same thing.

But, I do agree that if it wasn't live, they really should have realized someone could get in trouble and probably not aired that. But, it's not their fault that the women gave the information and it's probably best that it was brought to light that personal info was being given.

[Todash]

In my opinion you are not the only one who doesn't think the DJs were in the wrong. It was in poor taste and like they said they could not believe they got through. That is why I ended up not listening to the call. You have to put up with about a minute or so of these two bantering with each other with their very annoying accents (I thought they were loud) so I just clicked it off and gave up. I meant to listen to it later at home and never did.
They are very contrite now and have done a 360 in terms of how serious they look now compared to what a laugh riot it was earlier.

I should say that I am certain the DJs feel awful. I wouldn't be surprised if their days of "shock jocking" are over--voluntarily. I feel sorry for them, really; they're getting a lot of crap that they don't deserve. But the radio station management keeps churning out excuse after excuse as to why it was aired. "We didn't expect to get through." (Point taken, but you certainly didn't have to air the result.) "We tried five times to contact the nurses to get permission." (But you never did get permission, did you?) "No one could have foreseen ..." (An unforeseen consequence is still a consequence, and certainly they could have foreseen that very likely the nurses involved could have lost their jobs if the incident became public, not to mention they were publicly sharing details of someone's health condition.)

[Todash]

Todash - I must confess that I got sick of this whole thing and stopped following so I didn't know that it was pre-recorded. I agree with you that it was indeed the wrong judgment call of airing it. In fact, the royals are handling it much more nicely than I would have if it were my privacy. But I still maintain they were just doing their jobs. And I do think it's unfortunate that people support this type of "job" but alas, they do. So someone has to do it.

If we think about it, I'm sure SK has been blamed for plenty of things over the years because he writes horror. (Please note that I do not know this, I am just speculating.) Some people have a distaste for horror and think it's the worst kind of entertainment - even offensive - but we clearly all love it or we wouldn't be here. I really think it's the same thing.

Good point. Eye of the beholder and all that. But if you're going to skirt the edges of good taste as a chosen profession, you must be prepared to take responsibility for the consequences. Even SK has declined to republish Rage.

[Todash]

Poor Spidey. She started such a harmless thread.

[kingricefan]

Poor Spidey. She started such a harmless thread.

Unforseen circumstances, right?

[~Ally~]

This incident annoys me more because as nurses we have a bloody hard enough job to do without people deliberately wasting our time! We are extremely underpaid/understaffed, and that's without our awful ConDem(nation) government consistently cutting jobs and slashing budgets/funding. We are already finding it difficult holding onto our jobs without contrived incidents like this making us even more vulnerable. Those two nurses could have very easily lost their jobs/registration and all because of a malicious prank.

I've always felt any hoax phone call to the emergency services--hospitals, police, fire departments--should be frowned upon. A fitting punishment would be to force the (pathetic) time wasters to work a 13-hour shift within these services because I guarantee they wouldn't find their actions funny once they see how hard we all work to help others. My average break in a 13-hour day is 40-minutes and when I finish work I'm always physically and mentally drained. Most nurses are decent hard-working people that do it because they genuinely care. We do not deserve to be made fun of in any capacity, which is what these DJ's and their bosses ultimately set out to do. They could never have foreseen the outcome, but their actions were still unjustifiably wrong.