honestly it's not realistic. Why picking the masks if you KNOW she's 100% gonna get killed.
Killing her doesn't make the pictures disappears, especially since she's a journalist working for a big name journal. Hell, they could already be on the company's cloud at that point and killing her just make it worse.
Also killing her just make the whole situation even more stressful, they are just horny corrupt politicians, not hardened killers so all the more reason to run away.
They have a better chance to save themselves by running away than by killing her.