Yes I believe we are probably going towards a Weinstein style issue at this point.
Quote from this article by Katie Razzall
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj90jp7yjy7o
Philippa Childs, the head of union Bectu, told Radio 4 on Wednesday "the time has come for the whole industry to come together and accept that there does need to be some independent scrutiny of how broadcasters [and] production companies work, to try and address this endemic problem".
The Wallace story may be a wake-up call for the production sector. For years, we’ve heard about junior staff feeling unable to speak truth to power in these sorts of scenarios.
Now, some women are refusing to stay silent. If the sector doesn’t get its house in order, it could be career limiting not just for high profile names but for executives as well.
I think it's Bectu who backed the collective Dawn Elrick complaint on behalf of a number of women in 2022
Of all the articles above this, I think this is the key one, and is ultimately the one that raises some of the biggest issues:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/30/gregg-wallace-behaviour-letter-bbc-2022-masterchef-presenter
Dawn Elrick, the director and producer who sent the 2022 letter on behalf of other women who had contacted her, said the BBC suggested each individual would have to make their own, direct complaint to the corporation.
“This is very tricky for freelancers to do without identifying themselves, which makes life extremely tricky in the freelance world,” she said. “Placing the onus on individual employees/freelancers means they failed to see that I was trying to tell them there was a pattern of alleged behaviour.”
Elrick, who submitted her letter with the support of industry union Bectu, had received the allegations against Wallace through her Instagram account, Shit Men in TV Have Said to Me, which has become a place for workers in the UK film and TV industry to share instances of workplace sexism and sexual harassment. She had received multiple submissions about Wallace and felt compelled to report this to the BBC.
Elrick said that, soon after sending the letter, she also submitted the allegations to the BBC via Navex Global, an external whistleblowing service. She said she had received no further contact with regards to that report.
Elrick said the BBC’s lack of action showed there is “no satisfactory means of reporting sexual harassment and bullying within the TV industry”.
A BBC spokesperson told the Observer: “If issues are raised with us we have robust processes in place to deal with them swiftly and appropriately. We will always listen if people want to make us aware of something directly.
The key question Katie Razzall asks in the first article is about the BBC post 2018.
But BBC News has not been told whether the BBC executives involved in Wallace’s shows were made aware of any complaints about him after 2018 and the conversation between him and Phillips. If they weren’t, there is some plausible deniability that they thought the issues raised had been sorted.
Then again, that defence may only go so far. There are wider questions about how much a TV executive should probe, if they are aware that rumours have begun to swirl.
Popbitch, the weekly celebrity newsletter that makes its way into the inboxes of most media executives, had run stories involving allegations about Wallace’s language and behaviour in the past, for example. When does the odd gossipy claim about talent misbehaviour become an issue bosses should take a look at?
Should more questions have been asked by the BBC after 2018?
Remember Elrick's collective union backed complaint is dated 2022...
The BBC has a union shaped issue here about institutional level failure to deal with sexual harassment of women.
That makes it a scandal comparable to Weinstein.
It's very firmly NOT about Wallace as an individual at this point and very firmly about how women in television have no power to deal with complaints of this nature, even if they try and there is no joined up oversight between individual production companies and major broadcasters.
The BBC have got the heating on this however Gregg Wallace did a production for C4 last year and one of the productions caught up in this was C5.
I also really don't think it will be an issue restricted to the main TV channels. This will be a broadcasting issue for all the paid channels too.
I know what I've heard privately about the industry. It makes my skin crawl.
This is a much bigger deal than a lot of people want to admit.