It wasn't always like that.

It wasn’t always the case that news organizations were driven by the need to make money. When I was young, they were generally seen as loss leaders that generated prestige for the company.

One of the things that’s changed since then is that the media companies are big conglomerates that are owned by other companies, now. They used to have one major shareholder whose personality drove the company – David Sarnoff, Edward Noble, William Paley, William Randolph Hearst, etc. But "prestige" means more to individuals than it does to companies.

Here’s an interesting article (from the US Embassy to Germany, which seems an odd place for it) that hits on a lot of interesting, related ideas.