David Puttnam - arsehole of the week

Puttnam, a Labour peer who produced a string of excellent films a generation ago, holds forth in the Guardian's CiF about how "our democracy" is under threat if Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is permitted to buy the 60-odd percent of BSkyB (Chairman James Murdoch) that it does not already own.

There follows an enumeration of all the ineffectual things Puttnam and like-minded colleagues have done over the last decade to obstruct the spread of the dreaded Murdoch empire. Why, says Puttnam, Murdoch was once judged by the Office of Fair Trading to be deliberately running the Times at a loss. This to differentiate it from all the other broadsheets, which run at a loss by accident? But here's the nub of Puttnam's argument:

Given the power of the media to shape, inform and even to undermine democratic debate, we were convinced we needed a regulatory regime that was fit for the very specific purpose of protecting citizens' interests, over and above simply delivering a marketplace that might or might not ultimately benefit consumers.

So who, if not the citizen, is qualified to decide what TV programming is in the "citizens' interest"? Puttnam's unspoken but obvious answer is the BBC, that bastion of plurality and jobs for "right-thinking" people.

Among those instrumental in making the case for a "plurality test" were two ministers in the present government – Andrew Lansley, now secretary of state for health, and (Lord) Tom McNally, now at the Department of Justice, both of whom I count as firm friends. They were unequivocal about the need for such a test.

As Lord McNally said in Parliament at the time: "In the 1930s, we [he was born in 1943] were afraid that the fascists would take over the government and then control the press; in the 21st century, there may be a danger that the fascists will take control of the press and then control the government. The dangers are there . . . I am delighted at the introduction of the plurality test."

Fascist, eh? Tsk, tsk. I could do quite a bit of ad hominem and tu quoque about McNally, but that would rather spoil my case for awarding Puttnam the illogical arsehole of the week award.

Get it straight, you sad 60s hold-overs: your point of view was always arrogantly presumptuous and trying to shield it from competition in the marketplace of ideas is self-evidently anti-democratic.