Decades of the Republicans chipping away at public broadcast funding resulting in public broadcasting having to ground itself firmly in outside charitable donation. Of all the ostensibly-federal organisms, they (and the Post Office, thanks Amazon) are best-situated to be outside direct monetary government influence.
But outside donations do also have potential strings. Think how much strings mozilla has been having with the money google gives them. Of course, there's no strings attached from a legal perspective. But i dont think anyone is kidding themselves that it's not strings attached money.
Hopefully, the public broadcasting donations are from various small amounts from many viewers, and collectively they are less corrupting. But this isn't guaranteed, and during economic recessions, these sorts of sources tend to dry up (and get replaced with big money sources, and thus their agendas).
Decades of the Republicans chipping away at public broadcast funding resulting in public broadcasting having to ground itself firmly in outside charitable donation. Of all the ostensibly-federal organisms, they (and the Post Office, thanks Amazon) are best-situated to be outside direct monetary government influence.