Unnecessary anonymity

An IHT article on democracy in the Middle East ran the following quote - "Democratic development isn't always linear," said a senior State Department official, insisting on anonymity in commenting for this article. "It's a process that takes time, is evolutionary and requires strong consistent support, which is what our policy is all about."

This is irritating - his quote offers us nothing of interest that you need to go to a secret/anonoymous source for, but this playground-rumour style of journalism is growing more and more popular these days. Of course, this all harkens back to the idea of people posting online under an alias - we don't talk about anything critical to national security but may not feel comfortable sharing info about who we are.

Does this mean, however, that professional journalism is descending to the level of blogs? Considering this isn't really new, does it even mean that they've been at this level for years?

Sad.