Want to charge for content-is it in the public interest

According to Peter Scheer,media compnaies that are considering charging for content may need to consult a lawyer.

Writing at the Huffington Post he says that

Information wants to be free, but the creators of information also need to eat. Which of these interests ultimately prevails, although partly a business issue, depends fundamentally on legal considerations. To charge for access to editorial content, the owner has to have the legal right to prevent competitors from offering it (or as much of it as customers are willing to pay for) for free. And thanks to the vagaries of intellectual property law, the boundaries of this "right" are, at best, unclear.

The answer centres around what he defines as fair use.This he explains is

a doctrine of copyright law that basically blesses (what otherwise would be infringing) uses of a copyrighted work when the uses are both insubstantial and deemed to be in the public interest