There is a strong distinction between news articles authored by or on behalf of a company, versus user generated content.

So I don't think nytimes, or cnn is an apt comparison.

It's more like your cellular provider claiming intellectual ownership over the web you browsed and conversations you read when people start sharing their downloaded pages.

yea, there's also the fact the public entities have chosen to use this avenue for disseminating legal information

you can "de facto" a lot from this arrangement :(