Their finances are publicly available. [1] Like always in these things it's somewhat obfuscated, but it's likely that viewer contributions are part of the "Contributions of cash and other financial assets" line which was about $40 million. By contrast their revenue from "corporate sponsorships" is $101 million.

In general I don't think impartial centralized media/reporting is possible in the modern era where any source of influence becomes immediately targeted by countless moneyed interests. And it's not like a comic book thing where some guy with slicked hair comes in, drops off a few bags of money and a list of talking points. Rather it's probably more akin to politics where extremely charismatic smooth talkers come in, present their heavily polished point of view, treat you like a king, and then leave a few bags of money on their way out as a no-strings-attached charitable donation to do with as you see fit.

For a slight tangent, I remember when AOC first took office, quite doe eyed, she posted: "Our “bipartisan” Congressional orientation is cohosted by a corporate lobbyist group. Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn’t told to us in advance. Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where‘s labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?" [2] Those sort of critiques, which I was extremely impressed by at first, somehow disappeared pretty quickly from her. In lieu of that she started doing things like showing up at the $35,000/ticket Meta Gala with a gown emblazoned with "Tax the rich" worth thousands of dollars. I'm positive that in her mind she's still the exact same grass roots outsider fighting against a corrupt system.

Humans are very good at cognitive dissonance and it really ruins any centralized system.

[1] - https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2024/Nati...

[2] - https://x.com/AOC/status/1070764827533078529