Most major news sites, as well as some other sites of reading content like Medium, have a paywall for certain articles, but those are easily defeated by people who bother to search the internet.
As I suspect said companies are aware of that, and they don’t react to properly protect their paid stuff, what do they expect to gain?
Not sure how true, but I’ve heard news groups in particular keep it easy so that people in countries without media freedoms can access info their governments might not want them to see.