I think it is a fair characterisation. They want their content on Google because if they don't then it won't be seen. I'm not saying this was a deliberate strategy by Google but it is the reality.

I would argue most people don't want to buy newspapers because we have created an expectation that content should be free.

As to the quality of the content, a) that's subjective and b) it can be seen as natural evolution of an industry whose income source has been decimated by Google/Facebook. It's a lot cheaper to produce what you (and I do as well, to be fair) consider garbage than to produce the quality content we would like to see coming from newspapers.