NPR had $208 million in revenue in 2016. Even if you assume that 100% of funds from member stations and universities were really from the government, less than $67 million of their funding came from the government. The actual estimates are that around 11%, or around $22 million comes from the government.

I have no clue where you get the idea that NPR has a budget over over 2 billion per year, but you are way off.

Oops, the $435 million figure is for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, my mistake. My point is that government should have no role in producing or broadcasting what purports to be news. Journalism was called "the Fourth Estate" for a reason, but has lost any credible claim to that title during my lifetime. Public funding for "news" is always a bad idea, and in the U.S. has created an interlocking group of companies (CPB, NPR, public tv, et al.) that are incapable of publishing anything that doesn't align with one party in particular.

Australian here, government 100% funds the ABC and the reporting produced is better than the commercial networks of 7, 9 and 10.

It also funds most of the SBS, a foreign language service meant to foster multiculturalism and introduce foreign cinema and television to those who wouldn't normally have easy access to it. And they do a lot of English language subtitles for smaller foreign releases.

Well, they are not neutral in many cases. But, they are not always presenting political shows. Also, do you think ABC, CBS, CNN, or Fox are more factual? Clearly, none of them are neutral. Neutrality is impossible but fact-based reporting is possible. I accept that they cannot be neutral but still support.