Paying someone to advocate on your behalf is one thing. Companies do this all the time. Making a direct cash payment to a publication to appear in the publication's editorial content is quite another. My hunch is that this list is a case of the former, i.e. we are seeing a list of people with effective PR advocates, not a list of agents who have bribed the magazine, or whose PR flacks have bribed the magazine. That's a whole different kettle of fish.

But to answer the OP, I have no meaningful knowledge of which is true in this case.