Companies provide what the customer wants. And, as the adage goes, if you’re not paying, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Advertisement-funded “news” isn’t meant to enrich the reader/viewer — it is meant to attract the reader/viewer.
I think that perverted incentive has always existed with it, but the internet ad technology has really killed the information content. And now we’re have society-scale problems with misinformed citizens.
I don’t think industry will solve the problem. If a company allowed users to opt out and pay, their richest customers would do that and those were the ones most valuable to advertise to. So, offering an opt-out probably loses them money (and increases costs).
I think the news industry should be advertising free. I’d have to think on if it should also have govt funding, but that often gets co-opted.
When's the last time you paid for a newspaper?