Something can be taxpayer-funded without being an arm of the government. Government grants and public funding sources can be divorced enough from what they fund

Something can be taxpayer-funded without being an arm of the government. Government grants and public funding sources can be divorced enough from what they fund that you can get things like NPR and PBS, which I don't view as authoritarian, certainly not in the way that state-sponsored media outlets tend to push the current party agendas.