Sayeth Antonia: "The real journalistic legacy of Watergate is not about what pounding the pavement can produce. Instead, it's about what pounding good journalism can produce."

Some further excerpts:

... Some things seem to elude the corporate media consciousness — while others, even the most trivial, command vast amounts of precious resources.

For example, according to the watchdog group Media Matters for America, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, between May 1 and June 3, covered the Runaway Bride seven times and Michael Jackson nine times.

Yet, when it came to discussing the so-called Downing Street Memo, the recently published 2002 document that proves that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed'' to prop up the White House's case for attacking Iraq, Blitzer, like most of the mainstream media, has been all but AWOL.

His program mentioned it once, in a vague report that skipped over the White House's lies and obfuscations. Yet those lies and obfuscations have had arguably greater repercussions than even the Watergate cover-up.

The memo, which appeared in the very respectable Sunday Times of London on May 1, has been making the rounds in the left/lib blogosphere. But it has been underplayed by the mainstream media — while being derided or dismissed as "irrelevant" or "old news" by right-wing commentators.

Of course. That's how it's done. But a compliant media make it easy.

Consider that, exactly a week ago, President George W. Bush gave one of his rare news conferences. It was the perfect opportunity to ask him exactly what he knew and when he knew it.

Not a single reporter did.

How things don't change: During Watergate, the White House press corps was embarrassed to have been beaten by two dogged city reporters at the Post.

On Sunday, NBC's Tim Russert astonished many media watchers by raising the Downing Street Memo with Ken Mehlman, chair of the Republican Party, on Meet the Press. But it was a flaccid attempt. Mehlman spouted gibberish about the report being "discredited" and the usual spin about how "removing (Saddam) makes the world safer, makes America safer."

So that's that then.

Meanwhile, the right-whingers have stepped up their trashing of the memo, repeating the Republican party line.

Which makes many people wonder: Had the Watergate burglary happened today, would any news organization invest in an investigation? And how long before it would get a Newsweek thrashing from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and the think-tankers?

Again, the proof is in the pudding. To me, the phantom WMDs are a monster scandal in their own right (OK, maybe no worse than the Gulf of Tonkin).

Mr. Mehlman can trash the Downing Street Memo if he wishes, but it seemed clear to me that in the time leading up to March 19, 2003, the Bush administration was trying to prepare the U.S. public for war.