Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
ITV’S CHIEF EXECUTIVE Dame Carolyn McCall has been taken to task over The Jeremy Kyle Show as she faced MPs during an inquiry into the future of public service broadcasting in the UK.
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee chairman Julian Knight voiced his disapproval at the ITV series, which was axed last year after an outcry following the death of guest Steve Dymond.
Knight referred to clips of behind-the-scenes footage from The Jeremy Kyle Show the DCMS committee was previously shown, saying: “Frankly they are outrageous, these were people who were taken off screen and presented with an individual who was meant to be a psychiatric counsellor and they were filmed during these processes.
“They were baited over a long period of time. My jaw is dropping at the lack of contrition here from ITV and from yourself as a chief executive.”
McCall, who joined ITV in 2018, pointed out that The Jeremy Kyle Show had been on air for 15 years and more than a million people watched it every day on the channel.
Knight replied: “The Roman Colosseum held 55,000, it doesn’t mean because it was popular it was right.”
The ITV chief executive also said the show had followed proper procedures and was regulated over those 15 years, to which Knight replied: “Not well enough.”
He added: “I’m just astounded that you don’t accept the premise that this programme itself, although it ran for 15 years and seemingly was highly popular, it involved the psychological, not torture, but the psychological exposure of very vulnerable people … people who were out there in the public domain who should have not been in the public domain.
“I’m just surprised you can’t see that perhaps that was the wrong step and perhaps ITV should have ended it earlier, and perhaps we shouldn’t see its like on TV again.”
McCall said the show had been stopped “not because it had done anything out of regulation, it had followed processes and procedures and done all things that were guidelines for a show like that”.
She told the DCMS committee: “It had not been criticised in the way that you (just) criticised it over that 15 years.
“I think a lot has changed; I think if you look at the show today you wonder how it could have been on for so long – I agree with you – but a lot has changed in that intervening period.”
She continued: “I’m proud of a range of things ITV does, I’m proud of ITV. That particular show did polarise opinion, everyone on that show knew what the show was, it was informed consent, it was adults, they went through a screening and vetting process, they went through quite a lot of hoops before they went on that show, but it was conflict resolution – it was not always comfortable to view, yet people viewed it.
“We have said that we will not be doing a show like The Jeremy Kyle Show again, we have been very clear about that, I have been very clear about that.”
Deaths
The Jeremy Kyle Show was axed amid growing scrutiny of the duty of care that reality TV shows have to participants following the death of Dymond and former Love Island contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis.
The ITV boss also spoke about the effect the coronavirus had had on public service broadcasters, as advertising revenues plummeted and production was halted worldwide.
She explained that around 38 productions had resumed filming and staff were being brought back from furlough as lockdown rules were eased.
She added: “We are not producing drama because we haven’t found a way yet because the distancing rules are very difficult.
“They are people who will come off furlough last.”
Asked if there would be a lot of repeats to fill the schedule, McCall said it would be “inevitable”, with summer TV schedules facing the most challenges due to gaps left by the Euros and their flagship ITV2 series, Love Island, which has been postponed to 2021.
Citing the return of The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and The Masked Singer, she said: “We have got our big entertainment shows coming back, even without audiences.”
Need help? Support is available:
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
That’s the problem with todays media reporting of live events, they are all so busy trying to get one up on the other channels that they don’t think for a minute about what they are saying. Imagine hiding out from some langer trying to kill you only for some idiot reporter to come on air and say “oh by the way there’s 4 hostages hiding out in the cold room”!
If you can get your hands on “the human face of big data”, there’s an interesting piece on how terrorists use data and how in more prolific hostage taking countries it’s now quite common for live selected killings to take place using human search engines and media outlets for info. Or even waiting to carry out an attack to see who is in their area. Next gen terrorism. Off point but interesting.
Its not just a modern thing – during a ground stand-off following an aircraft hijacking (in the 1970′s I think) special forces had approached the plane via a blind spot to launch a surprise raid on the hijackers. Unfortunately events were being broadcast on live radio and the hijackers were listening in and knew exactly what was about to happen, with disastrous results.
Amen.
What Globalist Murdoch said about the Sydney Siege comes to mind.
Bloodthirsty vampire.
http://www.thejournal.ie/murdoch-tweet-sydney-1836603-Dec2014/
Good move. Hopefully the media will cop on a bit more. If some aren’t making it up they are getting it all wrong.
Fox News springs to mind!
About time the tv media were taken to task, imagine if that lunatic had been watching the live stream and did go down to the chiller they were hiding in…unthinkable acts would have ensued.
In this day and age you would think tv news channels would have more cop on…but I suppose being more and more sensationalist is worth more than a life in this day and age. How many more lives would have been saved that day if that sick man was not put under the spotlight?
Its sad really that there is an appetite for this sensationalism.
Apparently the gunman was watching but must have missed that report. The cop is to blame here as well as he shouldn’t have told the media anything in the first place. With today’s communications it would be easy for any gunman to have someone else watching TV, twitter etc and keeping them informed of what was going on. Best keep the media away from they area and in the dark until it’s all over.
I wonder if that journalist would have been so eager to broadcast that information if one of his own relatives was hiding in that freezer?…..I think not…….which just goes to show how little empathy some journalists have with other people in deadly situations.
I wonder what nationality and religion the editor / producer : journalist are?
It’s like that film Night Crawler. Ratings are worth more to these stations than human lives. Check it out. Jake Gyllenhaal is great in it.
I was thinking more about the reporter from Die Hard and Die Hard 2.
Yes. Just what I was thinking. Great movie.
Some of these”repoters” are sociopaths.
Look at the way they vilify Israel for its conduct in the war against Hamas terror,though experts in this field attest that Israel took the most extraordinary efforts to keep civilian casualties at a minimum while Hamas used its own people as shields in some cases. But vilifying Israel feeds the Jew-hatred and sells so ‘to hell with the facts go for what sells’.
See excerpt from Colonel Kemp’s report
–Three days ago I spoke to an Israeli pilot that told me that the same morning he had aborted an enemy target a total of 17 times because there were civilians in the target zone, and eventually he abandoned the operation. I asked him, was that not frustrating? His answer was simply no. And that to me, is one of the best things about the IAF – that the last very thing they want to do is bomb a target and have that on their conscience for the rest of their lives. And it was the same thing with infantry soldiers. I spoke to soldiers who have been fighting in Gaza, and several of them said to me: ‘We know what the rules of engagement are but even without them, it is always on our minds that we cannot kill civilians.’ See for them, this has nothing to do with orders, it’s just always there at the forefront. We’re talking about [reservists who are] simply artists, metal-workers, musicians, they are not killers. They have absolutely no desire to kill civilians. In fact, in terms of civilian casualties, the attitude of IDF solders is the exact mirror image of the way they’re portrayed to the world.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/col-richard-kemp-israeli-pilot-aborted-gaza-strike-17-times-to-protect-civilians-jewish-people-should-be-proud-of-the-state-of-israel-interview/
Happy Easter All!
Truly and accurately stated. You’ll get red thumbs galore, no doubt, Patrick, but that just goes to show that many people don’t like the truth messing up their paradigm.
@Elias Khoury! Thanks for Elias’ sentiment. Your prediction was so but not so bad and some of them even red-thumbed Elias to spite me.Laughable isn’t it!
I worry not but to speak the truth as I see it. People have a very healthy scepticism about the newsmedia here and it’s just a matter of time before they cotton-on to the con-job the Hamas/PLO and other Jihadders have pulled on them via the self-seeking media.
Additionally, Jew-hatred is on the wane however imperceptible it seems.
Happy Easter…
have your say