‘Social Media is like a congested motorway with often irrational drivers prone to Road Rage’.
Rob McLoughlin was talking to Nicky Campbell following the tragic loss of Caroline Flack, long time host of the controversial Love Island on ITV2.
She took her own life after learning that a criminal case would have continued and was scheduled to have started in March 2020.
He described her death as an ‘appalling tragedy’.
Rob, a former Director of Granada Television, paid tribute to her talent stating that she made ‘it look easy’ to host complicated live entertainment shows and was trusted as an ITV face.
He revealed that many inside ITV were ‘wounded’ by claims that they had not stood by her when she stepped down from the winter series of the show and had kept the door open for a possible return pending the outcome of the case.
He said that the court case made it complicated for Caroline to continue as host and while people were making connections with other events on the series including 2 suicides, that there were external factors which make this different and stated that ITV were right to cancel the weekend’s editions of the show.
He attacked social media stating that there is often ‘no filter’ and people forget that there are human beings at the end of often horrific abuse.
‘There’s a reason radio stations in the UK and abroad have delay buttons when you open the airwaves and people, especially the young, find it difficult to switch off their social channels’.
The appearance was Rob’s fourth on FIve Live over the last few months. He’s also appeared recently on Good Morning Scotland and on BBC Radio Wales.
A few weeks ago Rob discussed the future of the BBC on Three Counties Radio following the news that Director General Tony Hall was to stand down in the summer of 2020.