That use is problematic, but it's worth pointing out why. Just like this, I fear many people will understand your comment as an insinuation that the LAT et. al. just made up these quotes. I haven't read all of Fisk's criticism, but I believe his case is mostly that it allows those government sources to spread misinformation behind the cover of anonymity.
Oh yea it's definitely not the case that they've made up the quotes. Fisk is quite clear about that (if you can dig up the article, it's from like 2006-ish). It's just assuming what any government official says is true and printing it without doing any digging or checking for bias (or outright misinformation as you say).
Right. Decrying the NYT for peddling government lies is the definition of shooting the messenger. We have to think critically about all our sources of information, whether it's the NYT, Fox, RT, Breitbart, or our facebook friends.