This Morning #3 Another day, another host - but it’s Phil and Holly we loathe the most!

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Just seen there is going to be an investigation after Frizell and Gormley were called back from their holidays to speak to the government, when all this is happening why were they not here anyway, obviously not trying to sort things and just sit it out.
 
Beth1980 said:
To edit previous post they came back to speak to ITV other heads/staff and meet with the government on Tuesday. Don't think Holly will be onscreen as the press will still have this in their sights ready to report anything from the meeting.
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On the other hand, if she's off on Monday then the press have more to rake over. If I were ITV, I'd have her on making a contrite apology at the start of the show and then business as usual. As for the gov meeting, I cynically think they'll scapegoat PS and deny everything else.
 
This is very unpopular opinion, but I don’t see why Holly should resign or be fired. It seems to be guilt by association and people baying for blood.
If my dad commits a crime should my whole family go to prison because of something that he did?
 
MsGilmore said:
This is very unpopular opinion, but I don’t see why Holly should resign or be fired. It seems to be guilt by association and people baying for blood.
If my dad commits a crime should my whole family go to prison because of something that he did?
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If your dad committed a crime and they knew or they knew something dodgy went on but they decided to turn a blind eye then they should be held accountable.
 
Nice little article here in glamour mag
By Emily Maddick
2 June 2023



I worked as Head of News at ITV's This Morning from September to December 2019, before quitting due to bullying, sexism and a toxic culture of fear and intimidation.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, this will chime with the reams that has now been reported about the catastrophic and disturbing downfall of ITV’s onetime jewel in the crown of programming and the former King of daytime TV, Phillip Schofield. Last week, Phillip was forced to quit ITV after admitting to lying over a relationship he had with a young, male colleague, whom he first met when the young man was just 15 and whom Phillip later secured a job for on the show. This follows a very public falling out between Phillip and his former best friend and co-host, Holly Willoughby, over reports that Phillip didn’t tell her about his now convicted paedophile brother, Timothy Schofield.


Since Phillip quit, there has been an avalanche of allegations about the toxic culture at This Morning with former presenters including Eamonn Holmes and Dr Ranj Singh revealing their experiences. There have also been allegations that ITV did not investigate numerous concerns and complaints. On Wednesday, the TV station announced that they would be launching an external investigation into the scandal at This Morning.


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Did I experience a toxic atmosphere? Yes. Sexism? Yes. Bullying? Yes. Homophobia? Yes.

Here are some extracts from my (lengthy) exit interview that I wrote on December 6th 2019 and was requested to submit by ITV’s HR department upon tendering my resignation.
“I am sad to report there is a culture of intimidation at This Morning and on a number of occasions this has prevented me from doing my job to the best of my ability” I wrote. “I witnessed a number of incidents where I felt XX was unreasonable and unkind to a female producer and it created a climate of fear. I also overheard what I found to be sexist comments.” Speaking about the culture of burnout, I added, “I worry about my team’s mental health”. I also outlined specific incidents of bullying by named individuals and unreasonable behaviour towards myself and other female colleagues.

Did I hear about the rumours about Schofield and his young male lover? Yes, it was an open secret amongst the production team. Did I think that those in power knew about Schofield and his lover? Yes, I believe they were complicit.
Were King and Queen of ‘kindness’, the BFFs of bonhomie, Holly and Phil, as fun, friendly and fits-of-fizzy-giggles-funny as they appear on screen? No.

This week, Eamonn Holmes rebuked Schofield’s statement that This Morning was not a toxic environment. He said:
“This nonsense that he [Schofield] wrote today about toxicity, about it’s a happy place and whatever… holy god, what planet does this man live on? He created an atmosphere where people hated him.”
“People would avoid him in the corridor. He didn’t look at anybody, he didn’t know anybody’s names. Holly doesn’t know people’s names either. This is legendary within the production team, that how distant they are and how they just don’t care.”
This, in my experience, is entirely true.As Head of News, in charge of managing a team of up to 6 news producers who worked tirelessly around the clock to bring Ms Willoughby and Mr Schofield fodder for their cosy sofa chats every day, I was not allowed to communicate with either of them. Yes, really. And neither were the rest of my team. I enquired a couple of times to my boss as to if I was actually ever going to meet my colleagues - not, you understand, because I was starstruck (having worked in journalism for 15 years at this point, I had met and interviewed scores of A-list celebrities) - but out of common courtesy and necessity to work together. I was told this was not going to happen yet. I never once spoke to Phillip (he did appear to glare at me a couple of times, apparently, so I was later told, because he knew I was close friends with a senior tabloid journalist.) As for Holly, the only interaction we had was when I held open a door for her and complimented her sparkly skirt, to which she thanked me. They were treated like gods, kept in a gilded cage, with their daily meetings with the editor held in their dressing rooms, away from the team.
Eamonn and his wife and co-presenter, Ruth Langsford, on the other hand - along with Alison Hammond, Vanessa Feltz and Dr Ranj - were all super friendly, helpful and welcoming.

I was flabbergasted by how utterly fake it all was. As Eamonn also said this week: “This Morning under the guise of Holly and Phil is a very false existence.”
Again, I couldn’t agree more. On my first day I watched from the gallery and was startled by the difference between ‘on camera Holly and Phil’ and ‘off camera Holly and Phil’.
As soon as cameras stopped rolling, for an ad break for example, the perma-smiles would immediately slip and Phillip would often have a face like thunder complaining about minute details that he felt were going wrong or segments he didn’t like. Holly would often just sit scrolling through her phone.
The hours that the news team - mainly brilliant, hard-working, talented news producers - put in every day were brutal; regularly working from 5am and answering emails and phone calls into the small hours of the night. But there was a permeating culture of competitive exhaustion and burn-out. Aggressive and rude emails late at night from members of the team, even phone calls in the early hours, were commonplace. I worked every weekend for three months. I slept very little.
Now I am certainly no wimp and I was under no illusion that taking on such a senior role at the country’s biggest daytime TV show was going to be a walk in the park, 9-5 job. I cut my teeth in journalism in the newsroom of the Mail on Sunday in my twenties, where I also witnessed sexism, bullying and was shouted at a fair few times by older male staff, often peppered with expletives. I would regularly drive around the country chasing stories and doing doorsteps and my physical safety was compromised on one occasion. But I stuck it out for a couple of years as the training did, ultimately, make me a better journalist.

This Morning was different; it was more sinister.
There’s a certain energy that hits you when you enter the bowels of Television Centre in White City and into the This Morning news room, underneath the studios. Sure, live TV is an exciting, adrenaline-fuelled, electric environment, but this atmosphere was fuelled by something different; fear. A fear that left me, on more than one occasion, riddled with anxiety, unable to string a sentence together in daily conference. I would literally freeze, something that had never happened to me before or since. It was mortifying.

In recent days friends, family and former colleagues have reached out to me, as we’ve all watched the - at times deeply disturbing - reports and revelations be exposed.

I thought I’d feel some kind of elated vindication that what I experienced was finally coming out: but overwhelmingly I’ve felt - and I don’t use this word lightly - triggered. Triggered memories of some of the darkest months of my career. And angry; angry at what I witnessed and was allowed to go unchecked.
I saw casual - and sometimes blatant - sexism at the highest levels on the show. Crude and deeply personal jokes about colleagues' family situations and single mothers bandied about as if we were working in the 1970’s. Ugly, judgemental and offensive innuendo. In one high level exec meeting a senior member of the team made a homophobic joke towards another senior, gay, member of the team. It was met with stony silence.
While I was there, a senior female member of staff filed a lengthy legal complaint about sexism and bullying. She never worked on the show again, presumably having been paid off. Meanwhile I heard jokes from some of her former colleagues about her mental health, which disgusted me. I heard rumours of the camera crews being directed to pan in on female presenters thighs if it was deemed they had - God forbid - put on weight, in the hope that the MailOnline would notice the weight gain and write an article about it. I was bullied by other women on the show; insulted to my face and frequently behind my back. I had to run the gauntlet of rumours that, despite my 15 years experience as a journalist on a national newspaper and over a decade at Grazia magazine in senior editor roles, I wasn’t qualified for the job and endured whispers I had only indeed got the position because of how I looked. I was told I was fluffy. In a week when the show was focusing on promoting a mental health campaign, I saw a very talented and experienced female producer reduced to tears over something totally trivial. When I later commented to my team about the irony of this excruciating incident happening during such a week on a show that prides itself on preaching kindness and the importance of mental health, I was whisked into a room by a well-meaning senior producer and told it was risky and inappropriate to speak like that.

It’s important to note that I worked with some brilliant, kind and supportive colleagues, some of whom I am still in touch with. Not everyone’s experience at This Morning was like mine. The show has done some exceptional and important campaigning and raised a lot of money and awareness for charities over the years and undoubtedly brought millions of viewers great comfort, joy and entertainment. I will always remain in awe of the levels of hard work and dedication that go into creating the show every day.
Ultimately however, I realised that the actual job itself wasn’t for me and it never had been. I was flattered that I had been offered the position and seduced by the paycheck (TV pays a lot more than magazines.) But, while I was there, I didn’t get to partake in any actual journalism on the news team, we were more like glorified bookers, feeding stories to the presenters. Of course, I had to use my news sense and experience to source and pitch the news agenda for the show every day, but I missed writing, interviewing and getting the story. I was a square peg in a round hole and it was when I was asked to secure a story about a woman who was breastfeeding her husband to keep their marriage alive that I finally knew it was not the place for me.

In testament to the hard work myself and my team did during my brief tenure (and apologies for the not so humble brag here) the This Morning news team was the only ITV daytime TV show to secure all four major political party leaders in the run up to the December 2019 general election, and I myself booked Boris Johnson on the sofa. Indeed, the editor emailed me to say he’d never known anyone quit a job the day after booking the Prime Minister on the show. It was somewhat of a mic drop moment, I must admit. But overall, as a feminist, I could not sit by and watch what I witnessed happen to my female colleagues and myself and I told ITV as much. I also wanted my life back. Looking back now I am proud of myself that I had the courage to get out when I did, despite many people’s advice to stick it out. And I am so grateful that I escaped with my confidence dented, but not destroyed. In fact, I have never wavered in my resolve that I did the right thing and it’s bolstered my sense of self worth. It wasn't easy, but it was empowering.
A few days ago, I texted a former female colleague who had also left under similar circumstances and thanked her again for being such a support and inspiration to me. She very sweetly responded: “Your moral compass was a much needed support.” If only senior members of the team had employed their own moral compasses a bit more, then perhaps This Morning, and Phillip Schofield, wouldn’t be in such a sorry state today.
 
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