It's worse than that. Your theory is probably true for BAD content. Newspapers that exist to spread lies or just opinions that favor some narrative are primaril

It's worse than that. Your theory is probably true for BAD content. Newspapers that exist to spread lies or just opinions that favor some narrative are primarily driven to get as many eyes on their cheap propaganda as possible. The whole point of propaganda is to show it to as many people as possible. GOOD content, though, is expensive to make, and while the creators would absolutely love it if everyone read it, their primary need is the ability to keep producing it. There are fewer billionaires paying to keep them in business, and if there were, they'd mostly likely start falling into being the bad kind of content. So you end up in this situation where all of the true, high qualify information is behind paywalls, and all the bullshit propaganda masquerading as information is freely available to all.