David Puttnam: broadcasters have “committed a criminal act” by not scrutinising the claims of Brexit campaigners

The Oscar-winning film producer Lord Puttnam (David Puttnam; Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire, The Killing Fields) has accused broadcasters of a “criminal act” by not putting the claims of leading Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson under more scrutiny.

Puttnam, the former deputy chairman of Channel 4, said the media as a whole had failed to tackle the “Monty Pythonesque vision of Europe” which he said had been allowed to go unchallenged for the last 30 or 40 years.

He said the BBC had effectively been hamstrung by the strict rules on impartiality which govern it, which meant as soon as one campaigner said something it had to find someone to say the opposite.

Puttnam said: “I found the BBC’s coverage constipated. I’m not sure you can run programming like that, I don’t think it works really.”

He said during the EU referendum campaign 84% of print media stories had been found to be negative about Europe.“If you’ve got 50-50 in broadcasting by statute and 84-16 in newsprint, that’s not balance, that’s imbalance,” he said.

“The Monty Pythonesque vision of Europe has gone unchallenged for 30 or 40 years. None of us understood what the long-term consequences were,” he added. “I am still dizzy with what I feel to be a death in the family.”

Puttnam was a Labour Party donor, has been the Conservative Prime Minister’s trade envoy since 2012, and publicly opposed the secession of Scotland from the UK during the lead-up to the Scottish referendum on independence.

David Puttnam