Wire Taps and Journalistic Responsibility

Journalist bias is a very difficult thing to demonstrate, but I have repeatedly argued in the past that most bias is a very simple result of financial influences. All news media is industry, and is therefore a slave to profits, just like every other industry. That doesn't entirely explain the current trend with the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping. Take this quote from a recent article, sent to me with much thanks from the most brilliant (and hottest) reporter that I know:

"The White House has come under attack for the eavesdropping since The New York Times reported in December that Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance without warrants on the phone calls and e-mails of perhaps thousands of Americans following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The surveillance affected calls between the U.S. and overseas if one party had suspected ties to Al Qaeda." [link]

At what point did it become a proven fact that the surveillance took place only "if one party had suspected ties to Al Qaeda?" These wiretaps are top secret. There would still be a question of their existance, if the NY Times had not published an article about it [link], and that article always qualifies such statements as "according to officials..." etc. No one outside the NSA and the Bush administration knows the real extent of the illegal surveillance. According to NBC, the Pentagon has been spying on Anti-War groups such as the Quakers [link], and the ACLU is suing the FBI for spying on Greenpeace and other activist groups [link]. The only reason we have to think the NSA wiretaps are limited to those with actual "suspected ties to Al Qaeda" is because that is what the Bush administration will admit to. Do we have any reason to believe them to such an extent that journalists print their statements as fact, despite convincing evidence that their statements may be false?