The BBC Trust decided that BBC host Jeremy Clarkson should not have voiced satellite navigation programs because of the BBC’s conflict of interest rules, the Guardian reported.
Clarkson hosts a car program called Top Gear, and the show features the navigation systems on its program. The BBC’s director general Mark Thompson had questioned the “Top Gear satnavs” and had them “immediately pulled….from shelves and donated the proceeds of sales to charity,” according to the Guardian.
We’ve written about Clarkson few times recently, like when the BBC apologized for Clarkson’s Nov. 30 comments calling for public sector workers on strike to be shot. More than 31,000 complaints were filed to the BBC over those comments. In December, UK broadcast regulator OfCom announced that complaints to OfCom directly made Clarkson’s comments the third most complaints about program in the UK in 2011. Viewers complained again in late December when Clarkson “made a string of jokes about the Indian food, clothes, toilets, trains and even the country.”