That's certainly a risk worth evaluating. I wonder if Jamal Khashoggi and Omar Abdulaziz would evaluate (or "have evaluated", in the case of Jamal) the risk of

That's certainly a risk worth evaluating. I wonder if Jamal Khashoggi and Omar Abdulaziz would evaluate (or "have evaluated", in the case of Jamal) the risk of "TLA's who have the power to coerce Apple" vs "Saudi Security and Royal Family"? You are right, in that this is adding an extra organisation you need to trust (although if you're carrying an iPhone you've already surrendered a significant amount of trust to Apple and their ability to resist TLAs). A possible workaround might be to make the bar of "accredited journalists" super low (perhaps "anyone who's ever had a published byline in anything accepted as an original source by Wikipedia", and push it super publicly, so pretty much every journalist from cutting edge human rights activist/journalists down to the cub reporter on University newspapers is swapping their phone for refurbs every 3 months...