Does Google News benefit sites in 2023?

Forgive me for my ignorance. Never understood too well how Google News works.

I have a couple of sites approved by GN. Upon checking it seems to index new stories.

What's the benefit? Can these be used for backlinks?

Also, what about NewsNow. Does anyone use that and how easy is it to get approved?

News sites generally have a higher crawl rate
if your news articles get indexed within an hour or two, there's a higher chance to qualify for Gnews

I have also many websites that are approval by google news. I think google news help to Indexing very fast.