It would be helpful to add some numbers to your comment. 31% of NPR revenues are from member stations, and 13% of that 31% is federal funding. So ~4% of NPR revenue is indirect federal funds. This is, to give one example, substantially less than the portion of grocery store revenues that come from SNAP. Do we consider all grocery chains to be government sponsored businesses? Is Y Combinator government sponsored, since so many of its investments received money from the SVB bailout?

My answer would be yes, government support is essential for most businesses, but that makes this label useless in theory and malicious in practice when only applied to a tiny subset of government-funded companies.