A former Ofcom board member has called on Digital Britain author Lord Carter to create a citizen media ecosystem instead of the rumoured public-funded counterpart to the BBC.

Ian Hargreaves said during his Unesco World Press Freedom Day lecture Friday night : “What you need is not a second BBC but investment in networked journalism. It offers an interactive, confrontational, rock ‘n roll journalism. Such a network can also animate much else, but this cannot (be made) by a single organisation bound to the 20th century - it must be a patchwork of organisations, mutually competitive with each other ... that must be our focus.”

Communications minister Carter has said he wants to secure a strong public service alternative to the BBC. Hargreaves - also a former Independent and New Statesman editor, FT deputy editor, BBC News director and Cardiff Journalism School director - is now strategic communications director at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and a regular on Radio 4’s Moral Maze, but said his views are not those of the government department.