Wasn't there also confirmation that the NYT sat on the Weinstein stories until recently?
For that matter, look at how many Trump stories the Enquirer bought to keep them from hitting the press during the 2016 election (which is basically an in-kind campaign contribution).
That's legal? That really doesn't jive well with the concept of a free press.
The Enquirer bought exclusive publication rights to the stories, then didn't run them. So it was a matter of the women in question being contractually barred from seeking any other venue in which to publish the stories, whatever the Enquirer did with them.
As for the NYT, I think there it was more a matter of Weinstein's companies placing ads in the Times. Once they'd started pulling in enough revenue from online subscriptions, they were able to take the financial hit of not having the Weinstein ads as a result of running the stories about his behaviour.