off course they are subtle about it, it is so they can deny it later - but the recipient and the sender (and people reading it now) all know wtf is going on and what was being asked
On the other hand...
I'm an amateur writer (I admit, this is far from a journalist). Sometimes I'm just wrong, or I write something that ends up coming across differently than I expected. I always welcome feedback, even if I disagree with it, or I think it might be driven by some bias. It doesn't mean that I'm going to change it. But without such feedback, I'm not sure I'd ever get better. I guess I'm worried that in your world, journalist would be living in an ivory tower.
This constantly happens. People submit editorials with their opinion about what others wrote. People write-in to journalist all the time - to agree or disagree.
A movie review isn't an objective piece of pure journalism. It's much more of a subjective editorial, and as such, should be open to far more feedback.
They didn't threaten them with respect to future access. They didn't demand anything. They weren't rude or antagonizing. They just asked for a change. To me, it now seems like they did exactly what they ought to given how they probably felt.