Weird
I would have thought they would be happy. Large media companies probably win from Google News disappearing. As long as Google News is there, they are forced to compete on it with small websites, losing more and more control because there is a real risk that not letting Google act as it wants would lose them traffic.
But if Google News disappears, users are forced to rely on the names of big newspapers they can remember. The traffic from Google News they would lose might well be replaced by more traffic of people going straight to their websites. After all, I understand Google News only represents something like 10-20% of their traffic in the first place, unlike small websites for which it should be more like 75%.
I mean, it's not like users are going to stop surfing the web for news when Google News disappears. They are just going to surf in a different way, and some web sites are going to end up winning. It seems a fair assumption to me that those will be the bigger ones. If I was this AEDE thingy, I would wait and see for the results.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
