Harris Spokeswoman Maca Casado Tells Univision That Everybody Does Fake Headline Google Ads

Posted • August 16, 2024: A shocking exchange occurred on Univision’s Linea de Fuego (Firing Line), during host Luis Carlos Vélez’s exchange with Maca Casado, Director of Hispanic Media for the Harris-Walz campaign. Under pressure from Velez over the Harris campaign’s use of fake headlines in their Google ads, Casado flippantly told Velez that this was pretty commonplace. The Google Ads Transparency Center, which AllSides cited, shows that Harris paid to link fake headlines with popular news sites. “Some of the Google ads display pro-Harris slogans while linking to articles mostly from news sources AllSides rates as Lean Left, such as AP, PBS, and CNN and some Center-rated sources such as Reuters,” AllSides reported. Other outlets that the campaign used included NPR, The Independent, Time and The Guardian.

One fake headline the Harris campaign misleadingly attributed to the “Lean Left” media outlet The Guardian read, “VP Harris = Repro Leader.” It was paired with the summary: “VP Harris is a champion for reproductive freedom and will stop Trump's abortion bans.” Another headline misleadingly attributed to Reuters flatly claimed, “Inflation Is Down” with a summary that read, “Under the Biden-Harris Administration ‘The U.S. is winning the inflation fight.’” Harris’s campaign ads didn’t simply rewrite article summaries and headlines to favorably frame her policies. It also created headlines to make Trump look bad. This is scandalous. And, as Salgado and Pariseau noted, this happens at a time when there is all sorts of censorship going on against conservatives- in the name of “protecting the public from disinformation”.

More troubling, that the Harris campaign spokesperson would dismiss concerns over the practice as simply something “everyone does”, “nothing new or innovative”. As Fox News reports, the journalist who broke the story is already trying to sweep it under the rug: "It's a common practice in the commercial advertising world that doesn't violate Google's policies, but the ads mimic real news results from Search closely enough that they have news outlets caught off guard," Axios reporter Sara Fischer wrote. Just imagine the outrage had the Trump campaign been caught manipulating headlines in Google ads. The dudgeon would be stratospheric. But there is a double standard, and things therefore are (D)ifferent, which is how we end up with Univision’s Luis Carlos Velez being the only national journalist to confront a Harris campaign spokesperson on what is, by all accounts, a scandal- especially when combined with the aforementioned spokesperson’s attempt to wiggle out of the question. (…)

• More at: NewsBusters - Kamala Spox Tells Univision Everybody Does Fake Headline Google Ads
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/latino/jorge-bonilla/2024/08/16/kamala-spox-tells-univision-everybody-does-fake-headline
NewsBusters: Misinformation? Harris Campaign Pushes Fake News in Google Search Ads
https://newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/catherine-salgado/2024/08/14/misinformation-harris-campaign-pushes-fake-news