Jon Zeff, ex-director of the BBC Trust, who abandoned his £180k job after just nine months. Image: public domain
Poor old BBC Trust, possibly the most beleaguered and battered public body de jour. Last week’s announcement that director Jon Zeff was fleeing before the Trust’s predicted post election nuking, was just the latest in a sorry line of assaults: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), DCMS select committee, Chancellor George Osborne, Grant Shapps (and any number of Tories), industrialist Howard Davies, the Royal Television Society, Financial Times, Commercial Broadcasters Association, a smattering of academics - have all gone public with their condemnation of the BBC’s less-than-a-decade-old sovereign body. Even the new Chair of the Trust Rona Fairhead appeared to suggest suicide was the least bad option.
Trustees and Trust members are understandably keen to press upon anyone who will listen that while criticism of the Trust is easy, governing the UK’s biggest intervention into the media market is an altogether more tricky and nuanced task. Oh, and that not everything they’ve been blamed for is their fault.
