As it is today (as it's always been) employees are loyal to the muckety-muck who signs the paycheck...they tow the company line or else lose that high-priced, high profile status; as well as those coveted "press credentials" and any semblance of prior access.
Of course, today (with all the mainsteam media mergers) those who sign the paychecks are an increasingly small, powerful cabal of men on the mountain who can dictate what they deem as newsworthy topics. Reporters and reporterettes (for lack of a more descriptive adjective) prostitute themselves for the check signer in leiu of objectivity, unbiased content and newsworthiness.
To put this into context, Thomas Jefferson referred to the running of a newspaper in 1791 as a "polluted enterprise"...and today he is surely spinning wildly in his grave.
Yes, traditionally "correspondents" were literally people who wrote letters to newspapers back home. The decision whether or not to print a given letter, of course, would lie with the newspaper editor--who is responsible (to his employer, the owner of the newspaper) for the effect publishing a given letter has on the image and the salability of the newspaper. And of course the sales of the paper, and the advertising revenue dependent on that circulation, are in the long run what enables the presses to run. So the paper must successfully entertain . . .