To be clear, outlets like NPR are absolutely state-affiliated media. For example, in 2000 NPR and CNN allowed the US Army’s Psychological Operations division to place military members in the newsroom as interns as part of a media training program:

“PSYOPS is a division of the U.S. Army mandated to “develop and disseminate propaganda designed to lower the morale” of “enemy forces,” and to “build support among the civil population” in other countries for U.S. objectives (U.S. Army Field Manual No. 100-15).”

I’m fairly certain that if a Russian or Chinese media company had a history of hosting military psyops people in its newsroom, or if hired ex-military and ex-intelligence officers as commentators, it’d get the ‘state-affiliated’ label on platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. without any controversy.