To be sure, recent events surrounding the royal fetus, are a tragedy. Last week, two Australian DJs made a prank call to the King Edward VII hospital, pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles and were put through to Kate’s private nurse who believed they were the real deal and revealed details of her condition. In the media circus surrounding the event afterwards, the nurse killed herself.
As a result Mel Greig and Michael Christian, the DJs on 2Day FM are now on indefinite leave, their show suspended and the radio station left not really knowing what to do. In fact, Scotland Yard are now speaking to the Australian authorities regarding their investigation.
Some reward for the public service the two DJs provided, pointing out that the security and privacy policies of the hospital are a joke.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that if you have a strong Australian accent, you’re impression of the Royal Family isn’t flawless, and so the fact that it would seem like literally anyone in the world can access private medical information using a simple social engineering attack troubles me greatly.
Yet, for pointing this out, the two DJs are almost being held responsible for the suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who revealed said information. If we learn anything from this situation (apart from you shouldn’t just give out personal medical information over the phone – but most of us knew that anyway) is that a media circus of blame leads to suicide – so blaming Greig and Christian doesn’t seem like a sensible cause of action.
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Tags: jacintha saldanha, kate winsor, royal family, royal fetus
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2012 at 11:06 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.