NEW YORK, New York (The Adobo Chronicles, Washington Bureau) – If, by virtue of Citizens United, corporations are people, then Time magazine has all the right to name a corporation as its 2016 Person of the Year.  And so it did.

Just days after it was announced that AT&T is buying Time Warner — the magazine’s former parent company — for a whopping $85 Billion, Time moved up its timeline for deciding on the recipient of this annual honor.

While critics say that it was a conflict of interest for Time to name the new owner of its former parent company as Person of the Year, the editors maintained that the award is based on the impact of a person (in this case, a company) on the daily lives of people across the globe.

“What impact could be greater on people than having their telephone company influence their thoughts and opinions, even their choice of entertainment,”  the editors said.

This will also be the first in the history of Time magazine that its cover is actually an advertisement. The cover does not contain any text or teaser, just the plain old logo of AT&T.