Jacintha Saldanha

The death of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse involved in the prank phone call made by two Australian DJ’s Mel Grieg and Michael Christian to King Edward VII hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated with severe morning sickness, has brought to the fore for me the issue of the media and the impact it ultimately has on people lives.

While the prank seemed a bit juvenile, lets face it, before Jacintha’s death, we all laughed when we heard it, and thinking how gullible this person was. We were not thinking how this mocking and teasing could be affecting Jacintha.

I know everyone has their views on the radio DJ’s who made the call, but I do feel sorry for them. I think they are genuine in their remorse and when they say that when they say they expected to be hung up on when they rang the hospital. They could never have foreseen what would happen. Lets not forget that they are only the presenters of 2day fm, and I don’t know if the prank phone call was even their idea. While I’m sure they have a certain amount of input, everything has to go through or be decided by someone higher up in the food chain (producers etc.). I think no matter what happens for them form here, their lives have been changed forever after this; the guilt that they feel will stay with them for a long time. I just think the radio station as a whole needs to take some responsibility for what happened instead of throwing the DJ’s under the bus and letting them take the blame, and giving the family £500,000 is just an insult. No amount of money could compensate for the pain and loss her husband and children must be feeling.

I’m not going to pretend to know what was going through her mind when she decided to take her own life, or know what kind of person she was before this happened. But I do think us as people, and the media as a whole must’ve had a huge impact on her self esteem in the lead up to the tragedy. I think that it just wasn’t just the phone call itself, it was the fact that every media organisation caught onto it and either showed it on television or posted it on their website, with people then posting it on their Facebook and Twitter pages. She just could not get away from the humiliation.

As someone who is trying to get into the media business, I am a big fan of social media and connecting with people and generally keeping updated on the latest news/technological advances. But there’s also a huge dark side to it. Someone’s humiliation can become viral in minutes, and easy access to people leads to unnecessary cyber-bullying and ‘trolling’. It’s a lot easier for people to disconnect with someone when they are in the ‘virtual’ world. It can lead to a lack of empathy, not realising that this is a real person with real feelings just like me and you.