I can see how a newspaper editor might decide not to use certain people for various reasons, including the political stance from which they write.

But taking instructions from lawyers as to who should be used and who should not? That's not an editor, that's a lickspittle. Nothing to do with politics, the creep could be any kind of liberal or whatever, that wouldn't make it any better.

And I would have thought that any true American conservative would see it that way. Freedom of the press is surely a conservative value in the USA. (It might not be a Republican virtue, but that's another matter.) And freedom of the press includes the requirement that no one tells editors what they should or should not print.