ITN has been told to review its use of non-disclosure agreements by a law firm the media company hired following allegations that it used legal contracts to cover up gender pay discrimination, harassment and bullying.
A summary report by lawyers at Simmons & Simmons, seen by the Financial Times, recommended ITN chief Rachel Corp “oversee [a] review of existing NDAs/confidentiality provisions and consider revisiting them with the individuals concerned, if appropriate”.
The UK-based media company has been publicly criticised in recent years by staff, MPs and campaigners for being unwilling to address allegations that it had in the past used NDAs or confidentiality clauses in contracts to cover up misconduct accusations.
The Simmons & Simmons report, commissioned by ITN this year, 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 drew on interviews with 45 current and former ITN staff and freelancers about experiences mainly spanning from 2018 to 2024. It did give a figure on the number of past confidentiality agreements ITN used.
ITN, which makes news for Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV, was challenged by senior journalists over the report in a question-and-answer session on Thursday morning with staff at the company.
“It seems to highlight quite a major failing,” said Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the main anchor on ITN’s Channel 4 News, according to a person familiar with the matter. “There is no trust . . . that people will be treated fairly. There is not a sense of safety, and people are afraid for their jobs.”
The Simmons & Simmons report urged ITN to review and improve its whistleblowing policies, as well as other processes, resources, training and oversight. It also recommended ITN “at a minimum” introduce “a clearer structure for freelancers to raise concerns”.
The full report, with detailed findings and recommendations, was shared with ITN’s shareholder board. The company is owned by ITV, Daily Mail and General Trust, Thomson Reuters and Informa.
Among its responses to the report, ITN will introduce an enhanced “speak-up” service for confidential complaints, the company said.
But Guru-Murthy said in the Thursday meeting there was a lack of “deliverable strategy” to address staff concerns, according to the person familiar with the matter.
“Saying, ‘We’re going to work on the speak-up process, and we’re going to have a look at our processes,’ doesn’t quite do it,” he said. “If this was a public sector organisation, we would say, looking at this report, I’m surprised there have been no resignations or firings.” Guru-Murthy declined to comment.
Corp, who was appointed ITN chief executive in 2022 after serving as editor of ITV News, responded by saying the company was treating the matter with the “utmost seriousness” and would “put a better structure in place so that people are held to account”.
“It’s not about one group of individuals,” she said. “It’s about how all of us have dealt with [concerns].”
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.”
ITN added that the report had found it had upheld a commitment since April 2022 to no longer impose confidentiality provisions on anyone leaving the company that “prevent them from talking freely about their experiences working at the organisation”.
The company still applies confidentiality terms to financial settlement amounts and commercial matters. ITN has published the policy in full on its staff intranet.
Daisy Ayliffe, who worked at Channel 4 News as a journalist and commissioning editor, wrote in The Spectator last year: “Women who work for ITN have tried to report harassment and discrimination, but soon after doing so found themselves suddenly out of a job and bound by non-disclosure agreements.”
She said women who felt bullied and harassed had been ignored and felt “trapped in a complaints process” before they were eventually “paid off and given an NDA to sign”.
Ayliffe wrote that her own experience signing an NDA after raising concerns about “the culture for women in Channel 4 News” had left her feeling “broken”.
In 2022, Conservative MP Maria Miller wrote a letter to ITN highlighting “the apparent use of NDAs to cover up wrongdoing” around gender pay discrimination, harassment and bullying, after she was approached by a number of whistleblowers.
Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to now-jailed media mogul Harvey Weinstein, has also argued for ITN to free women from historic agreements.
Perkins co-founded Can’t Buy My Silence, a campaign group against the misuse of NDAs, after breaking a confidentiality agreement to speak out about allegations of sexual harassment against Weinstein.
In 2022, Can’t Buy My Silence and campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed launched a petition to release all Channel 4 News employees from their NDAs.
