Contemporary Marketing 16th Edition by Louis Boone,David Kurtz

Exercise 7

Marketers of online news content are struggling to change consumer attitudes about whether or not it is fair to charge for this content. While consumers are already willing to pay for movies, music, and games, they don't want to pay for news-whether it is from online versions of newspapers and magazines or online feeds of radio and talk shows. Yet these news formats are created by paid professionals and can be expensive to produce. Increasingly, daily newspapers in the United States have begun creating "pay walls" that require readers, after a while, to pay for a digital subscription.
Express your own view. Is it ethical for marketers of online news content to begin charging consumers for their services? If so, under what circumstances? If not, why or why not?