The Issue: A nurse’s suicide after transferring a prank call asking for information about Kate Middleton.
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Has it not occurred to anyone that a mentally healthy person does not kill herself over an innocuous prank (“Our Tragic Hoax Stunned Us, Too” Dec. 10)?
The call was mildly amusing, but there was nothing slanderous or threatening in it, and no significant private information was released.
This woman was not the nurse caring for Kate Middleton; she merely transferred the call.
Such an extreme overreaction should have prompted the press to probe a little deeper.
The media’s penchant for leaping to conclusions in coverage of many stories continues to disturb me.
What the heck are they teaching in journalism school these days?
Rosemary McClane
Hamburg
As a nurse who worked in an emergency room in Greenwich Village for many years, I had my share of drunk, psychotic, injured or ill celebrities, politicians and sports figures. I was always on guard and protected their privacy.
On 9/11, we had reporters pretending to be grieved family members to get private information, but our staff was cautious and none was provided.
The nurse who apparently killed herself after being involved in the radio prank may have been humiliated, but her own private demons caused her to take her life.
The blame for the nurse’s tragic reaction is sadly with the nurse, and should not be placed on the DJs, whose prank was meant to be silly and not sinister.
Pietro Allar
Manhattan
Sandy Kaye, the apologist for the Australian DJs whose prank led to the nurse’s suicide, says that “these poor kids did nothing wrong” and that it was the hospital’s fault for not knowing how “fragile” the nurse was.
How can anyone fathom that it is not wrong to call a hospital to get confidential medical information about a any patient, royal or otherwise?
Will these DJs and other heartless attention-getters change their modus operandi, or will they just think up another foolish prank that might go wrong and harm somebody else?
Mark Meirowitz
Manhattan