Why such controversy over prank?

[Shell B]

I'm sure she was embarrassed. People do crazy things. Everytime the stock markets crash someone kills themselves. Did this person have underlying mental health issues? Maybe. Or maybe she's an immigrant supporting a family... Who knows? Do the DJ's need to face criminal actions? No. But if a teenager decides to prank an old lady and she dies from a heart attack, is the teenager culpable? Yes. Same thing here. I don't think they should lose their jobs, but I think the station is right in pulling them off the air for a bit.

I disagree. They both performed their jobs and unforeseen circumstances arose from it. The fact that no one could have known that would happen or would have reasonably assumed it is enough to remove culpability. If you are driving along using your car precisely as it is intended and a freak gust of air lifts you off the ground and flips you onto another car, you are not going to have your license suspended. Furthermore, you cannot be culpable for the state of a person's health. A prank is a prank. This prank was not even particularly harmful. No one gave a shit, including those who the prank was pulled on -- two of the most watched people on the planet.

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Who makes a "prank call" involving a hospital?.......... twats.

Being a twat doesn't make you responsible for a person's death.

This is a clear case of forgery to me.

You're using the wrong term here. Impersonating another person is not forgery and it is not against the law unless it is impersonating a police officer where I'm from. I'm not sure on the UK law.

They posed as family members of a person in the hospitals care, and thereby gained privat information about that person`s state of health - and even worse - publicly broadcasted that information - which probably was a contributing factor to why the nurse comitted suicide.

It doesn't matter. They were not responsible for keeping that information private. The people working for that hospital were. Let's face it. That pregnant chick's nurse is the person to blame here. She broke the rules and possibly the law. She was exploited in a prank, but she fucked up. That wasn't even the woman who committed suicide. Again, she just handed the phone over.

I am almoust certain that if she had not comitted suicide, people would blame her for giving away the broadcasted information.

They wouldn't, because she didn't.

The two twats could have at least informed the nurse that it was a prank call and not broadcasted the information.

Then it is not a prank.

And if it was live they should have known better - to not ask about the condition of someone in hospital whilest posing as a family member.

I'll be the first to say that the press goes too far a lot. They are douches to these high profile douches. The whole thing is a circle jerk of disgusting proportions. Does that make it illegal or even immoral? Nope. It's just stupid.

When one looks at this, whilest keeping in mind the sleezy and disgusting methods of tabloid journalists recently uncovered in the UK and the continuing debate on ethics within journalism there, one easily understands the outrage.

But none of that matters as to whether it was these people's fault. Suicide is a choice. Nothing short of blatant harassment and/or abuse can pass the buck on suicide. In this case, they didn't even harass the woman. They just asked her to put them through to another nurse, who then gave them private information. It's not their fault in the slightest. Again, they are doing something they people do all the time without the slightest problem. That something bad happened this time could not have logically been predicted.