I agree with all this, except for the part where he accurately described US media as state sponsored. The US state works for US corporations and US corporations own the media. Also, NPR does get some public money.
Less than 1% of NPR funding is from govt. Tesla and SpaceX get far more public money than NPR does. $7500 per vehicle subsidy. Lucrative NASA contracts.
Care to elaborate on how mid-level air force officers are "benefitting" from ULA contracts? A rocket is a rocket, buyers should be fairly vendor-agnostic.
Wikipedia says more like 11%, but it’s pretty complex. NPR produces programs that local stations play, and pay for. So while you might hear someone say they’re listening to NPR, they’re listening to a “member station,” that is paying NPR. They might get some money from federal grants, some from the corporation for public broadcasting, which is federally funded, some from member stations who get some federal grants. So I’m not sure if all the info you’d need to figure it out completely is public. I assume corporate sponsorship beats out federal funds by quite a bit though.
You're forgetting the corporate funding and that their editorial line parrots the state department.
Also, SpaceX deployed Starlink to provide guidance to (US provided) Ukrainian weapons. Field commanders said without it they wouldn't be in the fight. That sounds aligned with US foreign policy and statecraft to me.
They backpedaled after the use of the technology became so aggressive it would be reputationally damaging for starlink.
"Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR."
