As a few others have pointed out, there's a difference between being asked not to publish somthing that's already in the public domain but politely declining (that's a newspaper's perogative) versus being asked to hold fire, AGREEING TO DO SO, but then changing their minds.
This dispute has the hallmarks of the latter scenario rather than the former, in which case I believe Cortese had every right to give the paper a taste of their own medicine BUT if it was the former (I.e. A straight forward decline to comply with 'orders') then I believe Cortese has over reacted.
A subtle but significant different that seems to have passed most people by.
Oh, and it's good to see the return of so many plants after the drought of the last 12 months... ;-)