Absolutely not, especially when the communication is entirely verbal. There is always inherent ambiguity and uncertainty as to whether the pilot and the tower actually understand each other, and whether they are even talking about the same thing. In this case, it seems fairly certain that they did not. The helicopter pilot was almost certainly presuming the tower was talking about the next plane back in the queue; she was seemingly oblivious to the imminent collision ... and flew right into it.
Also, the policy is clear. The purpose of the air traffic control system is to prevent collisions. The controller's top priority is control and to organize traffic to prevent collisions and to advise of imminent collisions, recommending course corrections in such cases.
Everything else is secondary.