ITV’s chief executive Carolyn McCall has addressed Caroline Flack’s death, which she described as “unbelievably tragic”.
The former Love Island host sadly took her own life on February 15, at the age of 40.
Speaking at the Enders and Deloitte’s media and telecoms conference in London, Carolyn said: “I think the thing about Caroline Flack is that ITV are absolutely devastated by what happened to her.”
“So many people at ITV knew Caroline, including me, and it was unbelievably tragic. I think that we can never know what is behind suicide.”
“It is not in any way simple. It is a very, very complex thing. We take advice from Samaritans and Mind and we will continue to do that,” she said.
Carolyn also confirmed the channel is focused on making sure their duty of care is “world-class”.
ITV came under fire last year over the aftercare offered to Love Island stars, following the deaths of former contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis.
Carolyn said: “As far as duty of care is concerned, we are absolutely focused on making sure our duty of care is, for both our participants and for our talent, world-class. We want to be best in class for that.”
“I think because we reviewed Love Island last summer, so a few months before last summer’s series, Paul Litchfield, who is the former CMO [chief medical officer], works with us, and he made a whole load of recommendations which we have implemented, which is about aftercare, which is about casting, which is about a whole range of things – financial management, social media management.”
“Social media is the thing that has gone absolutely ballistic. It has actually only happened in the last three years, because in the first two years [of Love Island] was too small,” she continued.
“It wasn’t really a successful programme. It has only really made a big difference in the regionals three years ago on social media.”
“We take that very seriously and we are actually working with the industry on how we can share all of that and how we can learn and pool our resources, so we can learn from each other. So that is what we are doing.”
