When you work in a sensitive environment such as the middle east as a journalist, one really needs to go overboard and keep an insulated protection layer - separate devices, clean contacts, Tor and VPN, the whole gamut. It is the journalist's responsibility in such environments to ensure their survival and make sure that they don't engage in something stupid.

I presume AJ, just like the others, tends to use a lot of freelancers - in fact, they pay out some of the highest commissions to freelancers. Most freelancers are responsible for their own lives.