This attitude reflects what is, in the minds of the members of the press, an ongoing crisis of legitimacy of the U.S. government, going back to Watergate and the FBI and CIA scandals of the 1970s. It was these abuses that created the decaying, but still regnant Imperial Press, which now reflexively adopts an adversarial stance toward our government even when it is acting in an effective way, fully within its power and abusing no one. The closest the Times could come to a hint of scandal in the financial-tracking program was that "one person had been removed from the operation for conducting a search considered inappropriate." This is hardly wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr.
As the pendulum swung toward media power in the 1970s, it should swing away from it now. Yes, the press has a role in exposing government abuses, which will sometimes involve reporting on secrets. Yes, the press deserves deference in keeping with the First Amendment. But it cannot be a government unto itself. The U.S. government should reassert itself by vigorously pursuing the leakers who broke the law to describe the tracking program to the Times.
The reporters who wrote about it, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, should be subpoenaed, and if they refuse to reveal their sources, they should go to jail. There, they can reflect on why their secrets are so much more sacred than those of the people of the United States, as represented by their duly constituted government.