What's the message, then?

"The ad is clearly meant to elicit the feeling that the problem is solvable and that they're trying to be objective"

Or rather the segment

But it is an ad really. Just native advertising

Where did you get that quote?

I said it minutes ago

I don't think it's comparable to a company saying "we're the best at X" either, because that company presumably does X

This is more like saying "PETA is dedicated to rescuing abused animals and giving them better homes" when all they do is keep em around until they can euthanize

And poison people's pets

~~I mean Heaven is a better home, isn't it?~~

If PETA put out a hotline for reporting PETA's animal murder I would laugh in their faces

So, if instead of a paid actor or the CEO of the company, A nationwide chain had an advertising campaign where the franchise owners were expected to promise quality ingredients and service to the customers in [franchise region here], is that brainwashing?

is that specifically unethical?

That's explicitly an ad

Okay, so, if you've got employees, who have it in their job description that they may be required to participate in advertising functions, instead of even the franchise owner being the ones having to do it. Still an advertisement, right?

If you take out ad time on TV and are talking about something you actually do, that is different from putting an ad in your news segment while talking about the importance of objective news on your partisan network

that is an extremely difficult argument to parse, I'm afraid I'd strawman it if I even tried... So many damn qualifiers.

It's because you're trying to connect two distant things

One is an ad that is blatantly an ad, the other passes itself off as news
One is "we sell X" from a company that, more likely than not, sells X, the other is" we should be objective" from a company that is not objective

All news companies think they're objective.

Literally

You go to the restaurant and buy a burger because you've been told it's food, and it is

I don't think they do tbh

I think some employees do, but I don't think the whole org feels they're showing people all the angles

Even the partisans think that their side is objectively right and the other is objectively wrong.

You go to the komonews site, you tell them the Trump Campaign Staffer on their Must-Run said some dumb shit, and they run him again anyway with no changes to the script

How is that anything different from muh apple other than the false promise?

Oh right, CNN was blunt about it being an ad

Dear lord...

You can dear lord all you like. When head office tells you there are partisan segments you have to run and *also* tell you to read a corporate memo about fake news and objectivity, I get to call bullshit

If you want to talk about other matters, sure. Why don't they run the Trump Campaigner instead of the portion of the program where they're talking about themselves?

It's not other matters

It's the same matter

You asked about them not being objective. When I pointed out how they aren't, the goalposts changed coordinates

It absolutely is a separate matter.

Now it's "off topic"

It's "other matters*

When did I ever imply that that the Trump must-run segment WAS on topic.

To be clear, I have no general beef with the idea of a must-run segment.

I'm evaluating them on their merits.

Yes and their merits are "a partisan org that talked about the merits of not being a partisan org"