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The Forum > Article Comments > Pernicious authority and poor administration or just bad journalism? > Comments

Pernicious authority and poor administration or just bad journalism? : Comments

By Jocelynne Scutt, published 24/1/2013

The 2DayFM telephone call that had such a tragic outcome.

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In what purports to be at the least an extract from the transcript of the making of the hoax call, in its second line as it appears in Dr Scutt's article, appear the words "..., pretending to be the Queen, ...".

Can it be clarified as to whether these words are part of the actual transcript, or have been inserted by the article author?

The reason I ask is because the highlighted text link 'transcript' in the article's fifth paragraph is currently yielding a '404 message' when clicked upon. Cate, Duchess of Cambridge, could be presumed to have two grandmothers, one paternal, and one maternal, respectively. HM the Queen is not Cate's grandmother.

Could it have been presumed that it was either of these two persons making the call at the time (5:30AM GMT) when the call was put through from the reception switchboard to the nurse who subsequently answered questions?
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Thursday, 24 January 2013 10:04:22 AM
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Its well beyond time that these so called shock jocks who masquerade as radio announcers and who, day after day,foul up the air waves with their inane utterings were brought into gear.
They appear to believe they can say what they like about almost anyone.
Shut them down!
Posted by Jack from Bicton, Thursday, 24 January 2013 1:19:19 PM
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was it not true that this poor girl had made previous attempts on her life. If so should not those factors be looked at more closely rather than the actions of loud mouth self centred radio announcers.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 24 January 2013 1:26:03 PM
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The two gross idiots assumed much and the poor girl was never informed of their 'prank'.

That caused her death.

Those two fools should never be allowed to do other than menial work for the rest of their lives.
Posted by imajulianutter, Thursday, 24 January 2013 6:02:37 PM
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The silence of the hospital is deafening, and hopefully this will change after the March inquest. They must have had a security process in place, but at the 5am point of a night shift endured by a woman living away from family all week, and previously diagnosed as depressed, with a medical suggestion that she not be left alone - well.
Compounded by the 2nd upstairs nurse, of whom, strangely, we have heard no name, no plea or opinion.
Such a costly hospital would have calls from POSH accents all the time - half the surgical staff would sound like any HRH and both nurses would know posh from tosh in a second, and, at no time did Mel say she was 'the Queen'. In my opinion, the radio station announcers have a case for getting an apology from the baying and ill-informed public lynch mob.
Posted by Brownie, Tuesday, 29 January 2013 10:15:17 AM
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The article author's seemingly pivotal fourth paragraph appears, at least on the face of it, to have excluded one of the 'principal suspects' in relation to her suggestion as to the exercise of 'pernicious authority' having played any part in the setting in place of this hoax: Charles, Prince of Wales.

Dr Scutt goes on to say, in the fifth paragraph:

"This all poses the question as to whether those
at the forefront of the criticism (leading it and
adding to it) heard the exchanges making up the call
from Sydney radio station to London hospital, or
read the transcript. The transcript is readily available,
published with medical details omitted: ..."

The transcript may very well have been readily available when the article was written, but it is not so obviously so now. The author's own link to it continues, as at posting, to yield a '404 Notice - Server not found'. I suspect, in the absence of any correction by the author, that at the time of submission of the article that link did in fact work, and that the explanatory words "Mel Greig, pretending to be the Queen:" were those of the transcript, not Jocelynne Scutt.

So on the one hand we have the 'journalism' taking care to establish that the hoaxers were all along intending to impersonate HM and Prince Charles, but in the actual words reportedly used by the hoaxers a display of very carefully chosen language that would preserve them from any charge of such impersonation that might subsequently be laid. A display of the sort of foresight and precision of expression one might expect from trained legal professionals, not light-weight disc jockeys.

I think the author may have been mistaken in using the word 'or' in the article title. I think the whole affair positively reeks of being a carefully (or perhaps, in the end, not so carefully) controlled media set-up. See: http://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/12/13/the-hospital-and-the-radio-station-when-management-fails-who-pays-the-price/#comment-59403

and, following: http://noplaceforsheep.com/2012/12/13/the-hospital-and-the-radio-station-when-management-fails-who-pays-the-price/#comment-60512

The exercise of pernicious authority is another matter altogether, perhaps not by whom the author thinks.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Tuesday, 29 January 2013 1:55:07 PM
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