This past Tuesday, Axios journalist Sara Fisher reported that Kamala Harris has been buying ads on Google to edit headlines, using a loophole.
Google is responsible for the loophole. You can buy an advertisement and insert whatever headline you want, adding a link. For example, I could buy an ad claiming I climbed Mount Everest and link it to a New York Times story about the war in Ukraine. Then, if you Google my name, that ad would appear. It’s absurd and a way for them to prostitute themselves for more money.
The problem is that, when you search for something on Google, the first few links are relevant ads, not search results.
Studies differ, but 7 or 8 out of every 10 people don’t read past the headlines. That is it. And folks, Kamala Harris’ smart tech people know this fact. They are counting on this fact.
So when the first few results are ads related to what you searched, most people will read those first few links, which are ads. People who search on Google don’t realize that the headlines are written not by the authors of the articles, but by whoever paid for the ads.
According to a study by Reputation911.com, “More than 90% of people never click on the second page of Google search results. The SEO giant, Moz, conducted its own study in 2014 and found that 71.33% of Google search traffic goes to the first 10 search results, and only 3.99% goes to the second page of Google search results.” Again, the Kamala/Walz/(Obama team) digital wizards know these facts and have ingeniously used them to snooker voters.
So, when people Googled “Kamala Harris and economy,” or something to that effect, they would see an ad at the top with a link to the Associated Press and a headline that read, “VP Harris’s Economic Vision – Lower Costs and Higher Wages.” Another ad linked to an NPR story and said, “Harris will Lower Health Costs.” But these were not the real titles of those articles.
There’s a word for this: Lying!
Harris/Walz are exploiting people’s attention deficits. Knowing that they likely will not click on the links and won’t realize these are not the actual headlines, she is literally rewriting the headlines to sound more favorable to her.
The irony is that the media are already in the tank for her, but seemingly not enough to her liking.
Google has since released a statement, saying that this doesn’t violate its policies, but it promised to take greater measures so people can distinguish between ads and real articles.
The Harris/Walz campaign is not commenting on media inquiries, hoping that the story dies before it becomes a controversy. It is now up to Trump/Vance and Republican allies not to let the story die.
As for Fisher, she is the first mainstream media reporter to run a negative story about Harris since she became the presumptive nominee. For that, it took only hours for her to retract her stance, tweeting that there’s nothing wrong with what Harris is doing.
The expertise of journalists is in finding scoops and reporting on stories, not in adjudicating whether their subjects are behaving ethically or not. So it is not surprising that Fisher is wrong about what is not her expertise.
What Harris is doing is wrong. It is unethical because it deceives people and involves lying to them. If the journalists whose articles are being rewritten by her without their permission were honest, they would be demanding an apology. But don’t hold your breath.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
