ITV BOSS CAROLYN MCCALL TO FACE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE GRILLING OVER PHILLIP SCHOFIELD SCANDAL
ITV boss Carolyn McCall will face a grilling from the UK’s influential Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) next week over the Phillip Schofield scandal.
McCall will appear on Wednesday to discuss “fundamental issues about safeguarding and complaint handling both at ITV and more widely across the media,” raised by Schofield’s exit.
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McCall will appear in front of the committee one day after ITV policy boss Magnus Brooke, who will use a separate session to discuss the upcoming Media Bill, which was planned prior to Schofield’s departure and the ensuing fallout.
The CEO’s summons comes a day after ITV revealed it had hired an external lawyer to “establish the facts” over Schofield and This Morning. McCall then wrote to Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Ofcom boss Melanie Dawes and CMS Committee Chair Caroline Dinenage to clarify “inaccuracy in the reporting” of the Schofield saga. Schofield departed the show last week with immediate effect but subsequently issued a statement saying he had had an “unwise but not illegal” affair with a runner on the show during his lengthy tenure, an affair that he lied to colleagues, ITV, his agency YMU and others about through the years.
McCall’s letter said the ITV employee was aged 19 when he first did work experience at This Morning, over the age of consent, and was given a job as a runner the following year, before being promoted to Loose Women three years later in 2019.
“The relationships we have with those we work with are based on trust,” added McCall. “Phillip made assurances to us and his agency which he now acknowledges were untrue and we feel badly let down.”
ITV previously investigated the situation in 2020 following rumors but Schofield and the runner fiercely denied the allegations, according to the public broadcaster last week.
The saga has shades of the Jeremy Kyle scandal four years ago, in which a contestant on the now-axed show committed suicide shortly before his episode was due to air. That situation led to an intense period of reckoning for ITV and the wider UK TV industry and McCall and others were hauled in front of the parliamentary committee on several occasions.
Schofield’s admissions have similarly sparked wider discussions about toxicity on set and former colleagues such as Eamonn Holmes and Dr Ranj Singh have stuck their heads above the parapet this week to criticize This Morning.