ITN has faced criticism from senior journalists and staff after a report on how it deals with internal complaints raised concerns about “low trust and psychological safety”.
The media company has been told to review its use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and improve its whistleblowing processes after allegations that it used NDAs to cover up gender pay discrimination, harassment and bullying.
The summary of a report by the law firm Simmons & Simmons, seen by the Guardian, found issues around “low trust and psychological safety within parts of ITN and that this continues to have an impact on the willingness of some individuals to raise concerns”.
The report was commissioned by ITN, which creates news for Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV. It recommended that its CEO, Rachel Corp, “oversee [a] review of existing NDAs/confidentiality provisions and consider revisiting them with the individuals concerned, if appropriate”. ITN said it will introduce an enhanced “speak-up” service for confidential complaints.
For the report 45 current and former ITN staff and freelancers were interviewed about their experiences from 2018 to 2024. While the report did not “identify material legal concerns” about the use of NDAs, it found that “the internal and external messaging by ITN was, at times, unclear and inconsistent and that this contributed to wider concerns in some cases”.
In a town hall meeting on Thursday, senior figures, including Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the main anchor on Channel 4 News, criticised the company’s management of complaints and its impact on staff trust. “If this was a public-sector organisation, we would say, looking at this report, I’m surprised there have been no resignations or firings,” he said. Guru-Murthy declined to comment.
Corp, who was editor of ITV News before she was appointed ITN chief executive in 2022, said in a letter to staff that “it is clear at times we have not met the high standards we expect of ourselves when people have raised concerns, and I apologise for that”. She added: “I fully accept that where we have fallen short, we must do better.”
In a letter to staff, Kyla Mullins, chair of the ITN board, said it was “determined that ITN learns from this review”. She thanked those who had given evidence, saying: “We know that this was not always easy.”
One of the women who gave evidence to the legal review said: “Krishnan says if this were a public-sector broadcaster people would be fired for how appallingly staff in Channel 4 News have been treated. Channel 4 is a public service broadcaster. It has said and done nothing in years about this.”
Rohit Kachroo, ITV News’s global security editor, said the company was in a cycle “where ITN has a review or some sort of initiative, glossy things go up on the intranet, and then in the years between nothing happens, the issues are left to languish”.
ITN has faced allegations that it used NDAs to cover up misconduct by former staff members for several years, with a former employee of Channel 4 News telling the Guardian in 2022 that she was left feeling “traumatised” and “gagged” after signing a settlement agreement containing a confidentiality clause with the company.
The Conservative MP Maria Miller, a former culture secretary, wrote that year to Deborah Turness, then CEO of ITN and now the BBC’s CEO of news and current affairs, expressing her concern about “the apparent use of NDAs to cover up wrongdoing”.
Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein and co-founder of the anti-NDA campaign group Can’t Buy My Silence, said the latest response from ITN was “mealy mouthed” and insufficient. “ITN has been making the same platitudes for years,” she added. “NDAs should not be used to hide alleged misconduct on any level. If you want to stop misconduct, you have to take away the tools that hinder transparency.”
An ITN spokesperson said: “We fully accept the findings of this independent review into our handling of complaints which found that at times our management processes fell short, and for this we apologise.
“We are committed to a culture of openness and trust and will implement the review’s recommendations to make sure that any time a concern is raised, it is addressed promptly, thoroughly and fairly.”
The spokesperson added that the company recognised that there had been a “lack of clarity” around NDAs and confirmed “that no one at ITN will have confidentiality provisions imposed upon them which would prevent them from talking freely about their experiences working at the organisation”. Furthermore, any confidentiality clauses would “only apply to any financial settlement amount and commercially sensitive matters”.
• This article was amended on 18 October 2024 because an earlier version mistakenly said that the report did “identify material legal concerns” about the use of NDAs, rather than did not identify the concerns.
