Mr Blunkett: reactionary, illiberal and wrong

Tony Blair's authoritarian attack dog has let himself down again. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has criticised "those who are of a progressive and liberal bent" for treating Allied and Iraqi propaganda as if they were "moral equivalents".

Those of a progressive and liberal bent stand accused of treating reports from journalists embedded with US and British troops with scepticism while swallowing uncritically reports from journalists in Baghdad, "behind enemy lines" and "provided with facilities and support from the regime". He singled out the Arab television channel al-Jazeera as being "linked" to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Never mind that the people he in effect labels as Saddam's credulous patsies include the large minority in this country who oppose the war and an overwhelming majority of his own party; but he was made to look ridiculous when, a few hours after his tirade, the Iraqi Information Ministry banned two al-Jazeera journalists from Baghdad, and the station announced that it was suspending operations in the city.

Mr Blunkett seems not to have noticed that al-Jazeera last week won an Index of Censorship award for its refusal to follow the line set by any of the autocratic Arab regimes in the region. Or perhaps he did, and assumed that the honour was conferred by quisling Westerners of a progressive and liberal bent.

Al-Jazeera may have made an error of judgement when it screened footage of dead British servicemen, but it is a valuable window on to an Arab view of this conflict.

If the Home Secretary was again trying to ingratiate himself with the Daily Mail, that newspaper's man in Baghdad was not impressed. "I find it rather offensive," Ross Benson said yesterday.

He is not the only one. Most British people are media-literate enough to understand the biases on information coming from this war zone and to make their own judgements.

And if an enterprising small business started to produce badges saying "Progressive and liberal", we suspect many Independent readers would wear them with pride.