The UK media is complicit in this tragedy
The ramifications of that hoax call are going to reverberate for some time in Australia, the UK and elsewhere.
One obvious consequence is that the tragic chain of largely unintended events will end, or strictly curtail, prank telephone calls on commercial radio in the UK and maybe even undermine TV stunts. A burlesque tradition has been snuffed out in its prime.
If the consequence of a hoax call, however innocent the original intent, is that someone dies as a result, then the laughter quickly fades.
In Australia, Daily Telegraph journalist Miranda Devine called for a ban on prank calls which allowed “the cynical and cruel to humiliate the gullible and naïve.”
The BBC has already had its fill of hoax calls thanks to the hilarious activities of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. The Fawlty Towers call ended the BBC careers of Brand, Ross and the previously peerless BBC Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas in 2008.
In Australia they are into crisis management, and probably large PR fees. The station responsible, 2DayFM in Sydney, part of the Southern Cross Austereo group, hopes it will somehow manage to retain its licence, its advertising and its audience.
In a move that suggested the hand of a Max Clifford, although Max himself is obviously much too busy with other matters, the Australian station will start carrying ads again from tomorrow (Thursday 13th December) and all the money from then until the end of the year will go towards an “appropriate memorial” for Jacintha Saldanha.
It’s a brilliant, significant and strictly limited gesture running for a total of 19 days. And if the advertising boycott means that little is raised for the appropriate memorial at least the Australian owners have guaranteed a minimum of $500,000 Australian, around £326,500.
The death of Jacintha is a perfectly tragic tale where almost everyone involved, some of them not explicitly identified so far, must share part of the blame and are complicit each in their particular ways and to varying degrees.
The young inexperienced presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian who pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles and provided yapping corgis for authenticity are clearly to blame. The tragedy could not have happened without them despite their subsequent remorse.
Their bosses who authorised the recorded broadcast, which invaded the privacy of the Duchess of Cambridge, and almost certainly breached Australian broadcasting rules, must shoulder a larger share of blame. Agreement is required from the subjects of pranks before broadcast – something that would never have been given in this case.
Jacintha Saldanha should not have put the call through, although you can see how it happened – it was five in the morning, nothing like this had ever happened before and she was operating in a second language and perhaps in awe of the “Queen.”
Then the hoax was broadcast on a totally obscure radio station in Australia that few in the UK had even heard of.
Here’s where the blame should spread wider. Much wider.
You can’t stop such a jolly joke spreading like wildfire on the internet. But all of Britain’s broadcasters, including the BBC, without hesitation broadcast and highlighted the embarrassing call to Jacintha without ever presumably pausing to ask whether any permission had been granted.
Naturally they showed taste and discrimination in not broadcasting the second nurse on the ward who happily chatted about the current medical condition of the Duchess of Cambridge. That would have been an obvious invasion of the Duchess’s privacy.
So all the broadcasting humiliation in the UK was heaped on one dedicated nurse on the switchboard who it turns out was of a somewhat nervous disposition.
UK broadcasters and newspapers who lapped up the story are therefore also complicit in the tragedy that was about to unfold.
It may turn out to be the case that the management of the King Edward VII Hospital did not do enough to support their loyal employee but at least there is no evidence that they were imposing disciplinary action for the unintentional breach of rules.
The Duke and Duchess appear blameless. There is no sign that they sought anyone’s head on a platter or issued threats or formal complaints to the hospital.
It can also be argued that Jacintha Saldanha, who had a husband and family, should not have committed what looks like an apparent suicide – that nothing so terribly bad had happened. We may never know why she did what she did, but we can’t go around blaming the victim.
Yet as Lenin once asked in a slightly different context: What Is to Be Done?
When things are bad there is always somebody who can make the situation worse. In this case it’s Lord Justice Leveson who just happens to be on an all-expenses-paid jaunt to Australia where he has been revelling in showing off his newly acquired knowledge of all things to do with the media.
Even before the death Leveson was demanding new laws here and new laws there. The prank call was evidence that there was a need for new privacy law.
“Mob-rule” on the internet and “trial by twitter” meant there would have to be new laws even though only one of the 2,000 pages in his report was devoted to the internet.
Naturally Leveson continued his silence about his report including the inaccuracy copied into it from Wikipedia.
“Judges do not respond to comment, however misconceived. Nor do they seek to correct error,” said the great man who is beginning to sound more than a little pompous.
The scourge of the British press may or may not have been aware that earlier this year the Australian Government released a Convergence Review into how the media, and the new media in particular, should be regulated in an age of rapid technological change.
Did the review recommend new media should be regulated or subject to new laws along Leveson lines?
That Louise McElvogue, co-author of the review, decided was the wrong question.
Rather than design rules to capture one form of media – television or the internet – the Convergence Review proposed a model that targeted the most influential media companies however their content was delivered.
This reflects the distinction consumers are well aware of; that between professional and user-generated media, McElvogue argues.
Professional media and the large media corporations should be subject to a new regulator with real sanctions.
News and current affairs standards, however, would be regulated separately by an industry-led body – removed from government direction.
If only Lord Justice Leveson had read Australia’s Convergence Review it might have halted the calls for new laws.
As for Jacintha Saldanha the Sunday Times headline probably summed it up best: “A prank too far.”