As far you’re concerned, as far the media’s long-term survival is concerned, there is only one “wrong” side.

The side that wants you destroyed.

The conservative side.

When conservative blogs criticize reporters and media outlets, their long-term goal is to permanently wreck your credibility.

So when you get real scoops, like the Schiavo memo, your reporting – your word – will not be considered good enough.

As the right-wing blog Powerline said last month, “what is the evidence that the memo is genuine?”

In their echo chamber, the fact that a professional journalist at one of the most respected newspapers in the country said it was authentic is not good enough to be evidence. Just the opposite.

And they want their world to be everyone’s world, where any attempt to uncover truth (so long as they’re in power) is deemed suspect.

But if I'd had a chance to sign it, I would have.

I grew up with the paroxysms of the Watergate hearings and the resignation of Richard Nixon. Those of you too young to live through that time don't realize something. We didn't know if our Republic would survive. At just shy of 200 years, it seemed the whole American experiment was about to crumble. That finally, we had come to the breaking point foreseen by James Madison in Federalist Paper #10.

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

I was still in middle school and I spent my summer break watching the Watergate Hearings hearing detail after detail of the government I'd been taught to look up to lying, stealing, spying on its citizens. A lot of it went over my 12-year-old head, but I knew even the adults were scared.

President Nixon had defenders every bit as partisan and fierce as the Bushiest Freeper today. His paranoia and mania for secrecy and dirty tricks was as legendary as his intellect and grasp of international politics.

And we never would have known about all this, but for two things-- an attentive security guard and two young journalists pursuing what first appeared to be a nothing story about the most inept group of burglars in Washington until it unraveled to reveal the hollow heart of the government itself.

Oh, and it required one more thing. A publisher, Katharine Graham with the guts and integrity to stand up to intimidation and for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Her own view on the story was characteristically direct. "The best we could do," she said, "was to keep investigating, to look everywhere for hard evidence, to get the details right, and to report accurately what we found."

"Romanticized twaddle" you say. It doesn't work that way now, and it didn't then.

Management says: "Circulation is down. The internet is killing us. And don't even talk to me about Fox. We're telling the stories our readers/viewers want to hear. We have to keep in mind the bottom line{". I could lose everything.

I could get fired.

It just doesn't work that way.

Perhaps not. But perhaps it should.

You think we don't know what we're asking. What's at stake for you-career and finances in ruins, reputation certainly under assault by the corrupt holders of power. Then again, that's not new, either

But here, too, the Post was not alone. The Nixon administration variously investigated, wiretapped and audited the income tax returns of numerous reporters. In all, more than 50 journalists appeared on a special White House "enemies list." Nixon's otherwise pro-business Justice Department filed antitrust charges against all three broadcast networks. As Woodward reported a year after Nixon's resignation, Nixon himself allegedly ordered an aide to falsely smear syndicated columnist Jack Anderson as a homosexual, and two White House aides held a clandestine meeting to plot ways to poison the troublesome journalist. In many respects, reporters who investigated Nixon were less hunters than prey.

And sometimes there's worse. But we do know. Some of us are paying closer attention than you know.

We are not the enemy. We don't want your underpaid, stress filled, grinding jobs. We have our own.

But we do need you to do yours. And, as LO says:

We want to help you.

We are customers begging for better product.

We want a media that reports, not regurgitates.

We are Paul Reveres desperately trying to warn you that you are under siege.

We want you to realize that caving into right-wing pressure is what will truly destroy your credibility, especially with the politically engaged customers you rely on most.

We want you to know that you don’t need them. They don’t care about your well-being. We do.

With the Schiavo memo story, you did stick it to those who wish you ill. You should feel good about that.

But don’t lord it over bloggers in general. We're just as happy as you are. More please.

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