Carolyn McCall, the CEO of ITV, said that there was a ‘imbalance of authority’ between Phillip Schofield and his considerably younger colleague.
Schofield, 61, said last month that he was leaving his post as long-time anchor of ITV’s breakfast show, then announcing a week later that he was leaving the channel entirely after confessing to lying about a connection with a young runner.
Schofield admitted to the affair in a statement, calling it “unwise but not illegal,” but said he lied about it to his family, supervisors, and coworkers.
Soon after, the channel stated that it was “extremely upset by the admissions of deception” and felt “badly let down.”
While there has been debate on the formality of ITV’s probe at the time, McCall has now spoken on the power imbalance at work.
She told a government committee on Wednesday that there was a definite power imbalance.
‘The imbalance of dynamics in that relationship makes it deeply inappropriate and we have policies that say that very clearly,’ she said.
She added that ITV worked ‘very, very hard for many months’ to ask the two men involved, as well as those in production, ‘if they knew something was going on’.
‘It was repeatedly denied by both individuals.’
In an earlier statement, ITV stated that a relationship between Schofield and the former This Morning colleague was probed in early 2020, but both parties ‘categorically and again’ refuted the accusations.
Furthermore, ITV stated that it spoke with “a number of persons” who worked on This Morning but was “not furnished with, and did not locate, any proof of a relationship beyond hearsay and rumour.”
Schofield, however, stated in a recent BBC interview that no “formal” inquiry was performed.
Schofield was questioned by Amol Rajan whether the probe was a “sham” because it “obviously did not get to the truth.”
While he stated that it would have been very impossible for the broadcaster to thoroughly investigate, there had been no ‘official’ investigation into the rumours.
‘I think if you have two people who are lying, then what can you do?’ he said.
When asked about the scope of the inquiry, Schofield stated that a few phone calls had been made to both men.
‘I think he was asked quite a bit and I was asked a couple of times and so, it wasn’t formal, but I think bearing in mind that there were two people who were absolutely intransigent in their denial, it would have been pretty hard,’ he said.
When questioned if ITV should have taken the charges more seriously because there was a “possible abuse of power,” he simply said, “Yeah.”
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1.
