Memo to Beeb: your reports are Googlable.

Here is an example of how to make a decent source with a decent story into a deceptive hook on which to hang a report.

Former Marine Ivan Medina lost his twin brother in Iraq, and his story provides Beeb New York correspondent Damian Fowler with his dramatic introduction to a report about reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11.

Fowler describes how 'the documentary... has fired up Mr Medina's anger towards the Bush administration.'

Continuing, he says 'Mr Medina was joined by other military family members who shared his outrage. Until recently, voices such as these - not typical die-hard liberals - have been less than conspicuous in challenging the government. '

The truth is somewhat different. Mr Medina lost his brother in November '03. By March 04 Mr Medina was reported by the Daily News saying 'President Bush chose to, what he has done is just taken a bad situation and made it worse. He has lied about the weapons of mass destruction...'.

Later, in April 04, Ivan Medina appeared on Larry King's show on CNN and said 'this was another plan from the president to win reelection and show and try to get his popularity back up when the truth is, we were not needed in Iraq... My brother and I never supported the war.' Notice here the long-term nature of his anti-Iraq war convictions.

So here we are in July 04, and the BBC journalist is trying to say, what? That Michael Moore inspired Ivan Medina to go gunning for Bush? That Ivan Medina has only now recognised the truth about Bush's war? All of this insinuation hiding behind the figleaf of 'until recently', a phrase almost hidden behind the emotionalised drama. The reality is that long before Fahrenheit 9/11 was on pre-released showings and lauded at Cannes the Medina family (because Ivan's father and sister were interviewed too) were on the publicity trail, for whatever personal reasons.

I have to admit this story is an improvement on others the BBC have published. The use of the term 'agitprop' by the correspondent to describe Fahrenheit 9/11 would be a major advance if it were contexualised for the reader. I do not think though that Fowler's comparison of Fahrenheit 9/11 with a party political broadcast is quite right: (in democracies) they have greater obligations to reality than Moore has demonstrated.

Also, I do not think describing MoveOn.org as a 'liberal political action committee' conveys very well the extremism of a group whose idea of supporting the troops extends as far as donating airmiles and which seems to think that The Day After Tomorrow was a serious stab at what might happen to the climate. 'Far Left Activists' would be more like it- after all these people were the Deaniacs of Howard fame.

The biggest problem in BBC coverage of Moore's film has been their insistence that opponents of the film have been conservatives, something reiterated in this report. Their failure to tap the rich vein of liberal critique of Moore's fallacious film shows a deliberate suppression of the 9/11 Democrat phenomenon and their desire to present Bush as supported by a narrow cabal of conservatives. The Medina family are willing tools in the BBC's own agitpropaganda.