Speaking to senior advertising executives and marketers at the ISBA annual lunch in London, Carter, who was appointed in January, accused Lord Puttnam of failing to understand the true nature of the new watchdog and that his recent amendment to the communications bill would move Ofcom away from its dual role of representing both citizens and consumers.
Lord Puttnam and his cross-party supporters in the House of Lords passed two amendments last week as part of an ongoing battle with the government over the content of the communications bill.
The key amendment of concern called for Ofcom to put greater effort into representing the interests of "citizens". The second one called on Ofcom to take up the campaign to promote broadband internet access.
The amendments call for a public interest test to be added to the bill that would provide an extra hurdle for any newspaper owner wanting to buy Five. The citizenship idea comes amid concern that broadcasting deregulation under the bill might see the UK adopting dumbed-down US-style programming on British TV.
Lord Puttnam has led a long campaign to stop Rupert Murdoch or another US media magnate being able to buy UK terrestrial broadcaster Five.
Carter, who is the former chief executive of J Walter Thompson and NTL, told the ISBA lunch that Lord Puttnam, while asking the legitimate question about how Ofcom will balance "the general duties that are outlined in the legislation", failed to understand the thrust of the government's legislation.
"Some people are suggesting that Ofcom may disregard its public interest responsibilities. This characterisation fails to understand the whole thrust of the drafting of the legislation, namely that parity attaches to the twin duties of protecting the citizen and the consumer," Carter said.
He went on to say that Lord Puttnam's amendment failed to understand how Ofcom was intended to work and he said it failed again to understand the "passionate interest" of the key people appointed.
"It also fails to understand the governance of Ofcom, namely that we are a board with a chairman, a chief executive... who will exercise their responsibilities collectively. It also fails to understand the passionate interest of the people who have been appointed in key positions."
Carter added that while Lord Puttnam's amendment was passed with the "best of intentions", it would move Ofcom away from its twin citizen and consumer role.
"Instead, it would require Ofcom to give primacy to the citizen interest at all times in broadcasting," he said.
Carter argued that the two citizen and consumer roles must work together. He gave the example of how, if Ofcom allocated more spectrum to Freeview, it would enable it to extend coverage as the digital switchover approached.
He said in this instance that because free-to-air digital TV spectrum was cheap in comparison to 3G, this would characterise the decision as citizen-led.
"But it would be a citizen-led decision taken in order to encourage people to make a follow-on decision as consumers to convert to digital TV. Taken together these twin citizen/consumer priorities would aim to produce a public interest outcome: namely a smooth and earlier transition to digital for all," Carter said.
The communications bill is currently going through the report stage.
The government said last week, after the amendment was passed, that it would consider the principle underlying the amendment.
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