Kamala Harris found herself in a situation where she has a lot of explaining to do.
The campaign hit its first rough patch.
And Kamala Harris may end up in court over this disturbing scandal.
Kamala Harris’ campaign manufactures fake news
Axios’s Sara Fischer broke the story that Kamala Harris’ campaign created its own fake news by editing the headlines of real news stories to run ads on Google, making it seem like these news outlets endorsed her campaign.
Harris campaign has been editing news headlines & descriptions in search ads that make it appear as if major outlets support her
—Google believes its sponsored disclosures are enough to keep voters from being misled, but media outlets may feel differentlyhttps://t.co/dU0KFhbeuy— Sara Fischer (@sarafischer) August 13, 2024
One of the outlets in question is WDAY radio in Fargo, North Dakota.
The President of the company that owns WDAY, Steve Hallstrom, told the Daily Caller he’s outraged by this practice and is considering all options, including suing Kamala’s campaign.
“We feel insulted and violated by what was done here,” Hallstrom said in an interview with the Daily Caller.
Hallstrom explained that the campaign created fake headlines to trade off the brand established by outlets like his radio station for pure propaganda purposes.
“You have a political campaign that used our news brand and our URL to effectively lie to people about the headline we wrote,” Hallstrom added.
“They lied to every single person that saw that ad. It’s misleading, it’s dishonest, and it hurts us as the company, our news brand. So as of today, we’re starting to make some calls here. We are considering all of our options here, including legal action,” Hallstrom continued.
The scandal
According to the Daily Caller, the Harris campaign linked to a series of real articles from WDAY’s website but manipulated the headline to make it seem like WDAY endorsed Kamala’s disastrous pick of Tim Walz as her running mate.
The Daily Caller reported the Harris campaign ran these fake headlines as Google ads: “Harris Picks Tim Walz – 215,000 MN Families Win,” “Learn About VP Pick Tim Walz – Harris Picks Tim Walz,” and “Harris Picks Tim Walz – Tim Walz Tapped For VP.”
Most people only read a headline when they come across an article on social media.
Kamala’s campaign is banking on the fact that with their fake headlines, anyone who comes across the ad will see that a news organization praised the Walz selection and thus adopt a favorable opinion towards the pick.
That enraged Hallstrom.
“We never wrote anything close to what is alleged here,” Hallstrom declared.
“They took two different unrelated stories that we did have on our website, sort of mashed them together, and then from there, they rewrote a few words to make it look like our news organization was cheering on the selection of Walz,” Hallstrom explained.
Google excused the Kamala fake news ads on the basis it’s not technically a violation of their policies.
Hallstrom thought that was nonsense.
“I’ve heard the excuses about how this meets the approval of the Google Ad criteria people, and I don’t care,” Hallstrom said to the Daily Caller.
Hallstrom said Kamala deployed a sneaky practice designed to deceive anyone who encounters the ad.
“When you see that ad, you may understand that it’s an ad, that any reasonable human being would look at that and say, ‘Oh, the campaign, they found a story or headline on a website that’s good for them. Who would not use that? Who wouldn’t use that?’ But that’s not what happened here,” Hallstrom concluded.
There is also the fact that there is zero chance Google would tolerate the Trump campaign running fake news ads containing edited news headlines as the organizations in question would raise holy hell, which in turn would lead to Google adopting a new policy to ban the practice.
