No response would've been better than that response.
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.
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.
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