The fact that it came from an unnamed reporter/media is what makes the headline suspicious.
I agree that this question needs to be answered and I assume we will get the answer very soon.
After all, the reporter's byline would presumably have appeared on the articles he wrote about the unit, so this probably isn't something that would be hidden or even possible to hide. Google searches generate lots of information for anybody interested in finding things published in newspapers.
I can think of two likely possibilities of why the reporter wasn't named:
1. The Washington Post is not part of the McClatchy chain of newspapers. For an initial article, naming the competing news organization for which the reporter worked, and which was responsible for editing and publishing his work, may be more significant than the name of the reporter. That would be common though not universal practice for a newspaper in dealing with reports on the news coverage of a competing newspaper — name the other newspaper, but avoid naming the individual reporter until it's clear the reporter has become the story.
2. There are some statements in the Washington Post article that raised other questions in my mind, such as whether the McClatchy reporter still works for the same company. I'm guessing so I don't want to muddy the waters by putting guesses into circulation. There's no reason for that since we'll get the facts shortly.
Other possibilities, though less likely, include that there may be security issues with the reporter. This was an embed mission, so the reporter may not be an American. Even if he/she is American, if the reporter is still in-country, it may be important to get him/her out before widely disseminating the name.
In any case, I have little doubt we will all get lots of information in the very near future that confirms, clarifies, or corrects the information in the Medal of Honor citation.
Full disclosure: I was a finalist for a newspaper position that would have included embedding as an occasional part of my duties, though I pulled out of consideration for that newspaper due to accepting a different job offer covering the military in a position where embedding was not an option. Later on, I had a different opportunity to be an embedded reporter, but for a variety of reasons it simply was not financially or logistically possible for me to take the offer.
I don't have any way to know how good or bad I would have been as an embedded reporter, but I strongly believe the story of our troops needs to be told and it's not being told very well right now. Virtually the only thing most people see in the media beyond the national news outlets is coverage of military funerals. I'm all for honoring people who made the ultimate sacrifice, but put bluntly, we're winning the war and far too few people have noticed. We need to be hearing what our troops are doing, not just what happens when a vehicle hits an IED and somebody dies.
I've read the attacks here in this and other Freeper threads on embedded reporters. I'm the first one to agree that some reporters have a serious anti-military bias and cause a great deal of damage. However, when we compare coverage of the current War on Terror with most prior military conflicts in which America has fought, a glaring difference is the near-total lack of awareness by the general public of what our troops are doing.
Many of us here on Free Republic are military veterans or have family members who are in the military or have previously served, but that is not the case for the vast majority of Americans who know very little about the military. Due to the current media crisis, most newspapers simply do not have the money to cover the troops the way they should be covered with on-the-ground reporters; the same is true of many broadcast outlets.
Lack of coverage most emphatically is **NOT** helping build support for our Armed Forces. We're now facing the strange situation of having to answer the question, “What would happen if we won a war and most people didn't notice?”