There’s no silver bullet in any of this. If the government subsidies journalism the government can control journalism. At least with corporate control you can have competing corporations telling alternate sides of the story. But ultimately it’s on the public to be skeptical and critical consumers of media.

I agree that both are corruptible, but I'd rather see some heavily subsidized government friendly news sources that then receive competition from private corporations (similar to the british or canadian model with the bbc and cbc respectively) rather than rely wholly on corporate backed news sources... NPR and PBS are alright I guess, but their budgets have been slashed several times over and while there is good journalism (like the Newshour) there isn't the budget to cover stories in as in depth a manner.

I'd also like to highlight that as much as people fear government control of subsidized news sources - both PBS and NPR have been quite decently independent, with PBS in particular not having qualms about investigating the government when warranted.