It's interesting that you imagine this kind of behavior to be a new thing. As someone previously stated, this is what some reporters stoop to in order to get "access" that they hope other reporters won't have. It looks like Dilanian did it the wrong way, allowing the CIA to become his editors.
And if a news organization uses information from the government sources carefully, it can occasionally get information that you might not otherwise hear. Certainly what the CIA says about something that the CIA probably knows about is part of what the public ought to know, but it needs to be prefaced with something like, "according to official CIA sources" so the readers know they're reading what the government wants them to hear.