It's hard for me to understand that why NPR would give up their journalistic freedom to receive the briefing one day early. Is it that kind of a deal-breaker to report an FDA announcement a day later than some others?
In a perfect world, NPR would have done their article a day late, with the proper quotes from those affected, and would have explained in a footnote that this information would have been out a day earlier except that NPR could not ethically agree with the FDAs terms which were blah, blah, blah.
Then, for the next story, the FDA wouldn't even tell NPR about the possibility of the briefing, so NPR would start researching their story when other news organizations published their stories. The NPR would be release its story several days after the people who had the scoop, and fairly likely, its article would sink and vanish.