People are consuming news media, so its no indication of that. The way these laws are structured, a news organization recieves payment in proportion to how often their articles are read, so they continue to only receive profit when their product is being consumed. If they were funded from a general fund, that might end up subsdizing useless or poor quality news instead of things people actually want to read.

The general fund could pay per click just as easily. The situation as it stands is that the customers aren't willing to pay to click and read. The social media sites aren't willing to pay per click either.