I happened to catch some of Channel 11's (that's the WPIX station here in the New York City area) last night and they were showing 2 reporters with the troops in Afghanistan along with a video connection to a soldier's family in NYC while they (the reporters) were talking with the same soldier.  A very nice thing.

But then when the station went to a picture-in-picture viewing, the inside picture had the logo of a corporate john placed next to it. What?! Do we have to have a corporate john for every piece of news or entertainment?  And in the background view of the barracks (or wherever the indoor area was), there was a box or something with a delivery company's huge logo.  Now, maybe they delivered stuff to the troops?  Great. But get the stuff out of the camera's line of sight.

I hate the shilling that 'news' has become.  If I hadn't been channel surfing, yeah, I wouldn't have seen it, but still, a tree falls in the woods, it still makes noise.  Whenever I read or hear about a company doing good, I don't get good feelings like I should. I always wonder how much they paid for the promo in the newspaper story or the tv 'report'.

But 'Pix went beyond bad.  They could have just as easily said afterwards "this special event was made possible by the generous donation by this_corporate_john."  But no, they had to plaster the screen with the john's logo/name.

Of course this particular corporate john is already on my banned list since they played the naming rights game for a stadium (or area or field).  I guess after the first time, it's no biggie to do it again.