Considering that journalists are not advising their sources to use Tor or anonymous remailers, not publishing PGP or S/MIME public keys as part of their contact information, and continuing to base their assumptions about technology on the reality of the 1960s, I am not sure why you would be surprised. Most journalists are as clueless about computing as the rest of the general population. The education system is doing an absolutely terrible job of educating people about technology, and journalism majors are not taught much about how computers work or how they can be attacked.