And LBJ wasn’t on good terms with them toward the end of his Presidency. They turned on him like a pack of dogs.
The Houston Chronicle probably went easy on him, even then. Johnson held a blackmail letter. He’d secured an agreement for positive press in exchange for permitting a bank merger to go through.
It was revealed in the 1990s when people finally got to go over LBJ’s tapes (Kennedy installed the White House taping sysem, LBJ expanded it, and the press did not discuss it until Nixon got caught on tape...).