After days of hearing everyone from documentarian Ken Burns to ABC News' Ted Koppel and George Stephanopolous weigh in on Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11," I took an evening off to see it for myself.

And as I had with "Bowling for Columbine" and just about every Moore project I've ever seen, I found myself wishing that this genuine, if sometimes annoying, talent could learn to exercise a bit of self-discipline.

Yes, there's some amazing stuff in the film, but Moore's need to tie things up in a bow -- even if it means fooling around with the facts -- frequently undercuts his message.

As a crash course for people who haven't been paying enough attention to the news in the past few years, it's no doubt devastating. But for those who've actually been following, for instance, the consistently in-depth coverage of terrorism and Iraq of PBS' "Frontline" or ABC's "Nightline," there's not all that much news here.

Not that that will matter to lots of people.

Stephanopolous, for instance, Monday morning described talking to voters in Ohio, three of whom had seen the movie. "What was most striking to me is when I asked them, 'Why did you go to see it?...they said, 'Because we wanted to get the facts.'"

Koppel, who appears briefly in the film, called "9/11" "a terrific piece of entertainment. There are even some interesting facts in it, but it is to the documentary what the 'JFK' film was to history. And what is alarming about that is that it becomes increasingly difficult because...'Nightline' is not nearly as entertaining as "Farenheit 9/11.' But we did the story on the trans-Caucasian pipeline through Afghanistan [which comes up in the film]."

Still, Koppel thinks there is still "a desperation for down-the-middle news."

I wonder.