Or we could do the sensible thing and make a few taxpayer-funded news agencies, same as with the rest of public services. UK, Canada and Australia have public broadcasters, and while fundamentally they are still tools of imperialist propaganda they are usually more accurate with their reporting and truthful with their journalism than the billionaire-owned ad-ridden slop.
The rest could then be funded through a mix of grants, subscriptions and volunteers.
Continuing with the MIC/wars analogy: "without MIC and wars to fund it we wouldn't have done the research for transistors/ICs/microwaves/radar/...". It's obviously a false dichotomy designed to normalize wars of aggression. It's the same here, brainworm slop and paid slop are not the only two alternatives.