OK, that's our point of departure. If the Post gets two officials telling them something then they're going to print that as 'officials say ...'. I agree that this often leads to bad journalism, but not that it's dishonest. You can of course have your own standards.
Yes indeed it is difficult when officials "tell" you something untrue, like two news releases that are very clearly about the same general topic but are not explicitly associated. In other words, it appears the 3 letter agencies were trying to imply something here, but not state it outright. It used to be (I think?) the job of the media to shine a light on government propaganda, not carry the ball for them.
An honest organization would not have printed the original article, it was far beyond an honest mistake.