There's no generic "News" company. This TLD would be too contested for ICANN to give it to anyone.

On the other hand, ICANN can make it a TLD in the likes of .com or .net, or maybe they'll see NewsCorp as a legitimate claim.

And you need to pay 185 kUSD and a long and expensive approval process. I think the big difference is that not anyone can register a gTLD in the same way that you register a .com or .whatever. Also, new rules apply to the registries, so if you are doing "bad" stuff ICANN can remove your registry and bye bye.