Consequences

I've had to leave this one a couple of days because it made me so angry that I couldn't trust myself to write about it either coherently or, frankly, within the bounds of the libel laws. So I hope that what follows is at least vaguely cogent.

I've always hated prank calls. Always. That whole type of comedy escapes me completely, and hasn't been funny since it was new, Candid Camera style. But that was basically sixty years ago. All the modern incarnations of that type - Fonejacker, Dom Jolly, Gotchas and the like - I can't stand them. They irritate, humiliate people, get their laughs at others' expense and, worst of all, simply aren't bloody funny.

Or at least, worst of all up to now. Now, of course, as part of the fall-out from such a 'prank', a nurse is dead at her own hands and two DJs in Australia find themselves suspended, vilified worldwide and accused of having blood on their hands. Called murderers, even, by some of the more hysterical posters on the website, Twitter feeds and Facebook page of their employers. Advertising suspended as sponsors rush to pull out. Threats against the two DJs and the digital security of Austereo. They've paid a high price for this phone call.

Not as high, of course, as the now bereft family of Jacintha Saldanha. It may well be that she was suffering with mental health issues beforehand. It may well be than any other person answering the phone would not have reacted in anything like the way she did. The tragic outcome could not possibly have been foreseen, 2Day FM's owners said. No, no they couldn't. But, quite apart from the fact that they're not funny, they're tasteless and they're unoriginal, that's exactly why you shouldn't do these things in the first place. You don't know who you're dealing with. You don't know how they'll react, what sort of trouble they'll have to deal with in the aftermath, when you've got your laugh and hung up.

All you can do, if you go ahead anyway, is accept the consequences. 2DayFM may rightfully claim that the extreme consequences couldn't have been predicted, but it's not inconceivable that anybody falling for their jolly jape could have lost their job. They must have known this would cause a very large fuss - this is the Royal family, for fuck sake.

Their protestations that they couldn't know what was coming ring pretty hollow, regardless of how truly they may mean them, especially in the light of their previous in this regard. Their licence has twice been placed on probation under threat of closure, and another of their efforts went horribly wrong when a 14-year-old girl revealed live on air that she'd been raped when she was just twelve. Then there's Kyle Sandilands, responsible for that poor girl's revelation, who has a string of misogynist, hateful and generally unpleasant incidents behind him - calling a journalist a 'fat bitch' and the Australian Highway Patrol 'scum' live on air among them. So I don't think it's being unreasonable to expect a modicum more care from the radio station when they're considering something like this.

Have some compassion for the DJs, I've been told. They didn't wake up that morning intent on killing somebody. They're distraught, beside themselves at what's transpired. Well, yes. Perhaps in time I'll feel some compassion for the two, who must indeed be feeling absolutely terrible. But just at the moment, rightly or wrongly, I think that's exactly how they bloody well should be feeling. And, but for the fact that it would only put people out of work who had nothing to do with it, I'd be pretty pleased if their wretched radio station closed down as well.