Limiting the scope of publication the way that many (most, I think) spies do puts one well beyond what most people think of as journalists.

If, in the days before the Internet, I observe an event and then write a report about it for school, I'm publishing to a very small audience, much as any spy would. (If it's a good report, someone other than my teacher and my parents might even read it.) But nobody thinks that I (in this fantasy a schoolchild) am a journalist.

These days, I might post my report to my blog and claim to be a citizen journalist; some people will accept this claim, while others will reject it out of hand. Even stuck with this controversy, this puts my audience (at least in the sense of the people who have the report available to them to read) far above most spies'. And even today, if I don't put it on my blog but only turn it in to school, nobody will think that I'm a journalist.

So I don't agree that spies are journalists.