Throughout her time as Veep and during her nascent presidential campaign, I will confess that I've never considered Kamala Harris to be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. But we have to give credit where due, and her campaign team has come up with an underhanded scheme that no other political outlet seems to have thought of, at least to my knowledge. It turns out that they've been editing the headlines and introductory paragraphs of articles from major news outlets to make them appear more favorable to and supportive of Harris. You're probably thinking that such a thing is impossible or at least illegal, but as it turns out, it is apparently neither because of the clever way they went about it. They're using a feature in Google's online advertising system to do it. (NY Post)

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team has been silently editing news headlines in Google search results to make it seem like major news outlets are on her side, according to a report.

The altered headlines — all paired with a “Paid for by Harris for President” banner — were changed without the news outlets’ knowledge, Axios reported Tuesday.

Nearly a dozen publishers were swept up in the faux headline campaign, including major companies like The Guardian, Reuters, CBS News, The Associated Press and PBS.

Like every political party and campaign, Team Kamala takes out online advertising space from Google. But rather than just putting in their own campaign propaganda, they fill the advertisement with the title of an article about Harris from news outlets including the Associated Press, the Guardian, and the alphabet networks, along with part of the leading paragraph from the article. That's fair enough, I suppose, and those outlets are typically grateful for any extra coverage they can get.

But that's where the clever part comes in. Google allows its advertisers to go back and make edits to their ads if changes are desired. So Team Kamala goes back in and changes the headline and the body text to make it look as if the article is more of a glowing review of Harris' policy proposals and her campaign. It doesn't really matter if anyone actually clicks on the ad to go read the actual article (relatively few people do) because the initial impression has already been left in the reader's mind. "Kamala must be doing really well!"

This probably isn't a violation of the law because we're talking about advertisements. Most actual media outlets - including this one - regularly feature excerpts of other sites' reporting based on Fair Use policy, just as I did above with the New York Post article I quoted. If I include the title of the other outlet's article, I paste it in word for word. I do the same with the text of the article I'm referencing. To do anything else would likely result in a lawsuit and the loss of my job. But apparently, all is fair in love, war, politics, and advertising. 

Amazingly, the media companies who were caught up in this scheme said that they "had no idea the companies were tied up in the campaign." A spokesperson for The Guardian said that they are reaching out to Google for more information about this practice of editing advertisements. Google says that the fake ads don't violate their policies because the ads are all clearly labeled "sponsored content," which is true. But that doesn't make this any less dishonest or disrespectful of the news outlets' journalistic work. It also sounds like this sort of misrepresentation could serve as grounds for a lawsuit. But will any of them - particularly the AP - make the effort to pursue such a course of action? Honestly, so much of their coverage is already flattering of the Harris campaign that they simply might not care. If Trump's people did this, however, they would probably be in court the same day.