The New York Times is known for being incredibly loath to criticize Obama, particularly on issues related to due process, wiretapping, the PATRIOT act, the "state secrets" doctrine, drone assasinations, etc[0].
The fact that Obama has been doing this isn't news; the fact that even the NYT is coming out and criticizing him for it is.
The Wall Street Journal has historically been the polar opposite, from an editorial perspective.
(Also, the other significance is that this is the editorial team, whose purpose is to opine - this is not the news team, which are supposed to attempt to remain 'objective').
[0] Basically, a large part of the foreign policy for which Bush was criticized during his presidency and which Obama has doubled down on.
Criticizing a president for wire-tapping puts the NYT in an incredibly awkward spot, as they forced their reporter to shelve the Bush wire-tapping scoop until after the 2004 election, back when privacy violations were still something people could get up in arms about.
I cannot remember (I'm 49yo) the NYT ever going from endorsing a candidate [1] to "The administration has now lost all credibility." That's quite a fall politically.
People would only be fired if this program is scandalous to the American public.
All the evidence suggests that the American public doesn't mind privacy violations as long you say "child pornographer" and "terrorist" a lot when you talk about them.
Do you really think the NYT headline was known to Obama? So yes: The reaction of the populace is news.
Again: Some people change course when presented with new data. While politicians and partisans rarely fall into that camp, I'm hopeful that Obama does.
He presumably changed course once already (when he received 'the news' that he could get away with the sort of shit he had many convinced he wouldn't do). With any luck he'll change course again with the new 'news' that the first news was wrong.
So the "new data" you're talking about is the fact that he got caught? Maybe the change he'll make as a result is more secrecy instead of less of this kind of program.
What will it take for Obama-ites to finally give up on the man? If you had video of him eating a baby saying "fuck america!" would that be enough, or would you still hope he could turn things around?
With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.
[...]
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
If the NYT publicly states that his administration "has now lost all credibility" it should be significant. They are the flagship liberal / progressive newspaper in the country. Their blunt outrage signifies an important element of his party's support is rebelling against the President's actions.
However he will probably be able to just shrug it off. US citizens have become too fat and lazy to give a damn about anything but tax cuts and their entitlement. They've forgotten that this is still a world where you have to fight for what is important.
