Harris Campaign Caught Altering Real News Headlines For Sponsored Ads to Create Appearance of Favorable Coverage: Axios

AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson

Axios’s Sara Fischer reported on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign was using Google search to promote favorable headlines — but they also edited real news headlines from legitimate news outlets.

While Fischer wrote that there weren’t any laws or rules violated by the practice — all the ads in question were clearly marked as sponsored ads by the Harris campaign — the appearance by the campaign to seemingly co-op the news media to make it look like they were providing favorable coverage was a bad look, and something that was seen to sow further doubt in the objective nature of the news media. Fischer wrote:

A source familiar with the Harris campaign’s ads team said the campaign buys search ads with news links to give voters searching for information about Vice President Harris more context.

The campaign has complied with all of Google’s rules, although a technical glitch in Google’s Ad Library made it appear as though some ads lacked the necessary disclosures Google requires when they ran. (A Google spokesperson confirmed the glitch and said it’s investigating what happened.)

“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,” the spokesperson said.

But the media outlets are not entirely copacetic with the campaign’s move, regardless of whether or not any rules have been broken. A spokesperson from The Guardian, whose headlines have been featured as part of Harris’s Google search ads, told Axios: “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”