A radio station is contemplating a lawsuit against Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign over its practice of altering headlines in online ads to make it appear that news outlets are supporting her bid for the White House.
Campaign ethics experts called the ad manipulation strategy “sloppy” and a threat to Ms. Harris’ claims of running an honest operation.
Steve Hallstrom, president and managing partner of Fieldstone Group, which operates WDAY Radio in Fargo, North Dakota, said the Harris campaign “lied to every single person who saw that ad.”
“We have reached out to the Harris campaign and demanded they terminate this ad immediately, and we are considering all options here, including legal action,” he said. “This is not right, and they should not be allowed to get away with this and tarnish our reputation — whether it’s a family-owned North Dakota company like us or a major national news organization.”
Peter Loge, who teaches ethics in political communication at George Washington University, said he was surprised that the Harris campaign would employ this tactic.
“They are running a pro-honesty, pro-democracy campaign, and this is a sloppy behavior that runs against the core of what they are trying to do,” Mr. Loge said.
The Harris campaign took headlines from news outlets, rewrote them to seem more favorable to her, and wrote favorable text descriptions. The campaign placed the rewritten content as Google ads while prominently displaying the names of Reuters, CNN, USA Today, The Associated Press and other media outlets.
The ads are linked to genuine news stories.
The Harris campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Ethics experts said the tactic is misinformation that could confuse voters and contribute to further mistrust and threats to democracy.
“The Harris campaign intended to mislead potential voters by changing news coverage to present their candidate more positively. This is an attempt to manipulate voters by essentially lying to them,” said Chrysalis Wright, director of the Media & Migration Lab at the University of Central Florida.
AllSides, a media watchdog that monitors political bias among news outlets, called for the ads to be taken down immediately and urged Google to block the ads.
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“The Harris campaign is running Google ads that blur the line between campaign content and news reporting,” said John Gable, CEO of AllSides. “These ads are misleading, misrepresent the original news content, give the appearance of support for her candidacy and create the impression of bias on the part of the outlets, whose content is being promoted. These types of ads should be disallowed from Google.”
In the case of WDAY, the Harris campaign took two headlines about Ms. Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, blended them, rewrote the headlines to be more favorable to the campaign and posted them on Google ads.
The stories, “Harris Picks Tim Walz” and “Minnesota child tax credit benefits 215,000 Minnesota Families,” were mashed together and reposted as an ad with different headlines, including “Harris Picks Tim Walz — 215,000 MN Families Win,” according to data from Google’s Ads Transparency Center.
A headline from The Guardian that read “VP Harris Fights Abortion Bans” was changed to add “Harris Defends Repro Freedom.” The Harris campaign then added text that read, “VP Harris is a champion for reproductive rights and will stop Trump’s abortion bans.”
An ad that links to an NPR story with the headline “Harris Will Lower Health Costs” now includes supporting text, “Kamala Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care.”
USA Today, The Guardian, The Associated Press, Reuters and the Independent issued statements saying they were angry and had no knowledge of or control over the way their content was presented.
The Independent said the series of fake headlines “is undermining what politics and journalism is all about.”
Former President Donald Trump questioned the practice.
“Wow! Google and the Harris Campaign are manipulating stories. Is this legal?” he said on social media.
The Trump campaign is not running those types of ads, Google’s Ad Transparency Center said.
Google said the Harris campaign ads did not violate any of its policies because they were prominently labeled as “sponsored” and “Paid for by Harris for President.”
Google said it has “provided additional levels of transparency for election ads specifically.”
“Election advertisers are required to complete an identity verification process and we prominently display in-ad disclosures that clearly show people who paid for the ad,” its statement said.
Mr. Loge expressed skepticism over Google’s defense of the practice.
“If you have to explain why something is technically ethical, you probably shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.
He said he didn’t consider the ads misinformation because they didn’t promote false information.
“It’s certainly misleading, but it’s not lying,” he said.
Ms. Wright said Ms. Harris risks undercutting her message that Mr. Trump, with false claims about the 2020 election, is a disruption to American democracy.
“This behavior goes directly against the lip service of ‘restoring democracy,’” Ms. Wright said. “At the same time, it highlights how news can be politically manipulated and demonstrates why many are so distrusting of mainstream media and politicians.”
Campaigns falsely reporting news to either pump up candidates or denigrate opponents date back more than 200 years. During the election of 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson paid a journalist to write that his opponent, President John Adams, “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman, but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.” In response, a pro-Adams newspaper in Connecticut wrote that under Mr. Jefferson, “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced.”
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have made it harder than ever to distinguish between real news and fake news, even as concerns about misinformation are sharper than ever. Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal was forced to remove more than 30 fake positive news stories that were generated by ChatGPT and tied to real outlets earlier this year.
Several mainstream news outlets, including The Philadelphia Inquirer and a local NBC News affiliate, could not find the stories in their archives. Other articles were attributed to the local CBS and PBS affiliates.
“Misinformation has always been a common practice during voting season. The difference is now misinformation techniques and practices are widespread, more common and impact almost every aspect of the upcoming election,” Ms. Wright said.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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