I think the idea that news does things for ratings and therefore money is not really true. Control of the narrative is vastly more lucrative for other stakeholders in these organizations. Some of these news organizations like the Washington Post for example lost $77 million last year. Fox news fired Tucker Carlson, the most popular news anchor in the channel's history. This is not an economically driven business, at least in terms of the news outlet's own profit and loss.

Non-profits give away billions and billions for non-economic reasons, they'd probably fund these loss making news outlets, and they indeed fund many non-economic advocacy organizations because they help them change the widely believed narratives to support their respective missions.