The Globe and Mail has a good story on the entire Downing Street memo controversy, and why the U.S. media didn't go bonkers over it.

Some excerpts:

After flurries of e-mails and the efforts of a series of websites, the ombudsmen for both The Washington Post and The New York Times questioned why their publications hadn't pursued the story -- especially if the memo meant the Bush administration had decided on war in July of 2002, and was doctoring intelligence to support its case.

But so far, the brouhaha about the memo has focused on whether the mainstream media missed the story, rather than the content of the memo itself. A letter about the memo was circulated and signed by 90 congressmen demanding answers. The memo "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your administration," said the still-unanswered letter, written by John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.

Still, the story seemed to be sliding into oblivion.

"It was one of the best illustrations of the real bias [of the mainstream media]," Mr. Naureckas (Jim Naureckas, editor of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's magazine) said yesterday. "That bias is towards the protection of the powerful."

But, Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, suggested a far-less nefarious motive.

The memo, he said, is a British official's notes about the assessment of another British official who held a meeting in Washington.

"A secondhand memo is hardly a smoking gun," he said. However, he added that U.S. journalism often lacks the persistence to stick with a story unless it is clearly progressing.

A handful of columnists acidly noted that just as the news media was basking in the storied recollections of Watergate -- after the self-exposure of Deep Throat, the former FBI officer who helped break open the case for Washington Post reporters -- it was ignoring the "smoking gun" memo about Iraq.

Even when heavyweight newspapers like The New York Times ran solid stories putting the memo in context, it failed to satisfy some critics.

Byron Calame, the newly appointed public editor of the Times (a kind of ombudsman) said: "It appears that key editors simply were slow to recognize that the minutes of a high-powered meeting on a life-and-death issue -- their authenticity undisputed -- probably needed to be assessed in some fashion for readers.

"Even if the editors decided it was old news that Mr. Bush had decided in July of 2002 to attack Iraq, or that the minutes didn't provide solid evidence that the administration was manipulating intelligence, I think Times readers deserved to know that earlier than today's article."