\'Fragile\' Australian Radio Hosts Get Counseling After Nurse\'s Death

HONG KONG - Anger and outrage continued to grow over the weekend after two Australian radio hosts made a prank call to the London hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, was being treated for acute morning sickness.

Mel Greig and Michael Christian, the hosts of the 2Day FM show, pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles, talked their way past a nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, to get information on the duchess's condition last Tuesday. The stunt drew worldwide attention, although Ms. Saldanha, 46, the mother of two, was found dead on Friday in a suspected suicide.

A recording of the hoax call is here.

Thousands of pointed complaints were posted on social media sites, advertisers pulled their spots from the show and the hospital's chairman assailed the radio network. The two hosts have been taken off the air and told not to comment, and they have reportedly disabled their Twitter accounts.

But a number of voices also were being raised in defense of the hosts, who were said to be in a “fragile” condition because of the uproar, according to their employer, the Southern Cross Austereo network.

Rhys Holleran, the network's chief executive, told reporters that the hosts were “understandably incredibly distraught, too, and we're concerned for both their well-being.”

The company said it was providing intensive psychological counseling to Ms. Greig and Mr. Christian.

“I spoke to both presenters early this morning, and it's fair to say they're completely shattered,” said Mr. Holleran, quoted on The Lede blog. “These people aren't machines, they're human beings. We're all affected by this.”

Mr. Holleran added that the network was “very confident that we haven't done anything illegal.”

Jeff Kennett, the director of Beyondblue, a government-led initiative to spread awareness of depression and related mental illnesses, appealed for understanding.

“I just hope the Australian community will give them all the support they're going to need to come to grips with this horrible outcome,” said Mr. Kennett, a former member of parliament, who in a radio interview described the call as a joke and a prank.

“Nothing they did was offensive,” he said. “We've got to be careful we don't become so PC that we deny ourselves the opportunity to extend to these two all the support we can.”

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote: “Leading psychiatrist Patrick McGorry called for calm, saying suicide was unlikely to be caused by one individual factor. “I feel sorry for them because they obviously had no intention of causing any harm. Blame is hardly ever useful.”

No direct connection has yet been made between the hoax call and Ms. Saldanha's death. Still, many Australians were angered and offended. In a commentary in the Morning Herald, Michael Idato called the prank “not funny.”

“It wasn't funny when it was played,” Mr. Idato said. “Not for some hand-wringing sense of righteous judgment, but simply because one of its targets - a mother to be whose pregnancy was causing so much discomfort that she had to be hospitalized - was so vulnerable, and its effect - to have details of her medical condition broadcast on radio - was an appalling breach of privacy.

“What holds a civilized society together is an understanding of action and consequence, a duty of care to each other that allows some elasticity for fair mischief and good humor, but does not contravene a handful of basic tenets: humanity, dignity, compassion, respect.”

What's your take on the incident? Was it merely a harmless prank that went horribly wrong? Or was it an insensitive and foolhardy stunt, an invasion of privacy that requires some sort of punishment of the radio hosts and their network?