It’s extremely irresponsible to suggest someone use cryptocurrency in such an environment. The public ledger is a godsend for the secret police giving them evidence for retroactive prosecution and good odds de-anonymizing people, receiving funds from a notorious money laundering site could be used to persecute the journalist, statistically nobody has adequate opsec to conceal their use of these applications, and having sent them tokens would obligate them to take on additional risk converting them into something useful.

Cash is much safer because the risk is only at the time of transfer.