I do not normally comment on our stories from around the world unless there is some Cayman connection. This is the exception because a radio station’s so called joke resulted in a death. With the many radio stations here in Cayman fighting for the diminishing advertising dollar playing prank calls on unsuspecting persons could happen.

The Internet has opened up a wholly different world from the one I knew, even ten years ago.

With all the social media web sites that incorporate videos, podcasts, weblogs, forums, etc, they provide instant communications from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world, not only on computers but on mobile devices that persons carry in their pockets.

All the media here, including iNews Cayman, whether it’s print, Internet based, radio or television use the mobile media via, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, We also use YouTube as a source for our video to reinforce our news. All of these sites are used to inform our followers we have breaking news and to go to our website. We can “Tweet” short personal messages from the reporter/presenter or give longer pieces of news on Facebook and Linkedin. One click and it can go to thousands, even if it is one person working at one computer in his/her bedroom or garage. Other Tweeters can re-tweet the same message.

It is fine if it is used responsibly. But this is asking too much of people. It was bad enough when members of the public, mainly juveniles, placed photographs of their “friends” in compromising situations across the social media causing much distress and misery to the victims that in some cases led to suicide. It is quite a different situation when the professional media resort to it.

I am referring to our story “Kate Prank Call Nurse ‘Commits Suicide’” concerning the nurse working at the hospital treating the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge, who was duped by a prank phone call from an Australian radio station on Friday (7). The nurse was the victim of a hoax phone call in which two Australian DJs, Mel Grieg and Michael Christian, pretending to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, phoned up about Kate.

Jacinta Saldanha was the person who first received the call and put it through to the ward where another nurse updated the pair on the Duchess, who was being treated for severe morning sickness.

“You know what, they were the worst accents ever and when we made that phone call we were sure a hundred people at least before us would have tried the same thing,” said Grieg on air. She added with a laugh, “we were expecting to be hung up on we didn’t even know what to say [when] we got through.”

“We got through and now the entire world is talking, of course,” said her co-host Christian.

When the royal impersonators called the hospital, Saldanha put them through to a second nurse who told Grieg and Christian that Kate was “quite stable” and hadn’t “had any retching.”

Of course a LOT of people were amused and equally a LOT of people were furious including the Royal family. Princess Kate was in hospital because she was sick!! She was ill! Nurses, including Jacinta, and doctors were treating her.

Jacinta’s mind was on helping the sick – not expecting some idiots to call pretending to be the Queen of England and her son. Can you imagine what that Jacinta must have felt after she learnt the truth. She was the victim of a cruel, senseless, irresponsible prank. She would have read that she was all over the media. She would see she was ridiculed and now obviously the subject of an inquiry. She would have been mortified at what she had done. She would have been reduced to tears. I have no idea if she had anyone to turn to? If not she must have felt so alone. A victim of the social media that even showed the DJ’s gloating on YouTube that started with the supposedly professional and responsible radio media.

The DJs apologised on air but they then used the Twitter medium to tweet to all their tweeter twits to brag of their success and I quote from what they tweeted, “It was the easiest prank call ever made”. So much for their apology. Worthless.

At 9:35am that same Friday the police were called to an address in London after a report about a woman being found unconscious. Paramedics rushed to the property but the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. It was a suicide. The woman was identified as the nurse, Jacinta Saldanha.

Oh isn’t that funny?! But the world is not laughing now. The two disk jockeys have received thousands of tweets with everyone clamouring for their heads. So much so they canceled their tweeter account.

These so called professionals acting like irresponsible kids. And even worse, the prank had been cleared by the Australian radio station’s lawyers. Rhys Holleran, CEO of the radio Station Southern Cross Austereo, said the DJs followed the company’s procedures before broadcasting the call.

The CEO’s apology was tempered with his extraordinary statement, “I think the more important question here is that we’re very confident that we haven’t done anything illegal.”

Of course, otherwise Mr. Holleran would be faced with costly lawsuits. That really was the most important thing not that his authorised prank caused someone’s life.

The station was warned by Australia’s broadcast regulator last spring about its violations of the “decency provision” of the country’s broadcast code.

I hope this incident and their obvious apologies that are not worth a cent keep them off the air for good and that includes the DJs. The station is facing an advertising boycott and I hope it is permanent.

Let this be a lesson for all of us in the media and we learn from. It must not happen again, not anywhere. Not here!

It is no joke when it is quite plainly ridicule and those DJs made it ridicule by their tweets!