> Often journalists are not just protecting sources but guiding them or encouraging them.

Source?

The Rolling Stone scandal around "A Rape On Campus" article is a good example:

Rolling Stone’s investigation: ‘A failure that was avoidable’: https://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigatio...

Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to Erdely’s notes of the conversation"