What the media commenators are saying

The ITV scandal dominates the papers


At the Guardian Steve Hewlett asks the pertinent question,Why has nobody been fired at ITV pointing out that

The company's compliance system was "completely inadequate", no risk assessment was carried out of any of the issues involved, and the company's producers showed "total disregard" for broadcasting codes. Ofcom went on to describe "an institutionalised failure that enabled the broadcaster to make money from misconduct", and even ITV said of itself that it had found "a serious cultural failure within ITV".

For Steve the

real villains were those responsible for promoting and implementing the strategy without considering the consequences. And that, in a nutshell, is why no one's been sacked.

A topic for Matthew Norman in the Independent who listening to John Whittingdale on the today programme said

At first I was bamboozled by John's mention of "a catalogue of the most appalling abuse", and assumed he was talking about that unutterably monstrous story about the Austrian cellar (especially when he then referred to "looking under the stone").

However

But no, he was in fact on about TV stations conning viewers, an issue given muscly new legs by the tale of Ant 'n' Dec winning the 2005 People's Choice prize at the British Comedy Awards, at Robbie Williams' insistence, when the real phone vote victor was Catherine Tate.

And in the same paper Raymond Snoddy tells us

Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse for ITV.... Global content director Dawn Airey does a runner to a rival and, just as the ripples stop spreading, along comes Ofcom with both barrels and fines the broadcaster £5.67m – rather higher than the figure that the ground-preparing leaks had suggested. The fines get added to the £7.8m compensation payments already announced.

Emily Bell in the Guardian comments

It would take a heart of stone not to smile even slightly at the Ofcom report, which blistered the paint on ITV's listing - and maybe even sinking - hull, and its grave framing of offences revolving round the geographical location of the "Jiggy Bank". But none of it is funny, because of the underlying trend it denotes and the immediate damage it visits on what ought to be one of Britain's remaining stellar industries.