Endorsements by sports heroes and product placement in movies (barely) fall on the legitimate side of the fence—the former explicitly treats people like walking billboards (kind of gross, but honest) and the latter happens in a fictionalized world.

Slipping product endorsements into presumably nonfictional situations (newspaper articles, broadcast news reports, State of the Union addresses) is illegitimate, weasel advertising. It's a difference of kind, not degree.

Not nearly as bad as Video News Releases.
Check out this 2006 report
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

And presumably, each McWhatever had to be made from heavy plastic, in order to prevent the anchors from "accidentally" knocking them off the table, and in order to keep the "product" looking "fresh" under hot studio lights for several hours.

Not surprising in the least, given that most products you see advertised are doctored up to make them look much better than they actually do after you remove them from their packaging.

They are realistic enough you'd want to dig in ... even knowing they're not real.

Same way viewers respond to mainstream corporate news.

The circle is closing.

Hasn't anyone seen Idiocracy? And doesn't this kind of thing seem an awful lot like a slippery slope to-- well-- "family dinner, brought to you by Pepsi", "Math Class-- proudly sponsored by Hershey’s".

Getting in an ethical huff about product placement on network TV news is like saying rape is unsanitary -- yes, but that's the least of its problems.

Same old guy - same old style.

Are you perhaps confusing Andy Rooney the newsman, with Mickey Rooney the actor, who played the role of Andy Hardy in a series of movies in the 1930's and 1940's?

Pencils!

As previously noted, an old man would know enough about the history of TV news to realize that overt product endorsement is nothing new.

Sorry, there's a difference?

My point being back then product placements were overt, so who the FF gives a carp if they do this?

I didn't flip through the news on the local ABC and NBC affiliates to see if they deemed events on a CBS show to be equally newsworthy, but I doubt it.