Doctored headlines

Alan Cai

August 16, 2024

If you’ve searched for Kamala Harris on Google in the past couple of weeks, search results for news articles that popped up may have been doctored by members of the Harris-Walz campaign. Specifically, the ads direct to real news articles buttheir headlines and descriptions as they show up on Google were edited to appear to show support for the Harris-Walz campaign.

Although the practice is not uncommon according to Google and several political experts, it can be misleading to undecided voters who are under the impression that the articles are real news headlines or are led to believe that these news organizations have endorsed Harris and Walz, which is often not the case. Google does label these results as “sponsored” and does state in fine print that the ads were paid for by Harris for President. However, the fact that the titles are altered to make it seem like the news outlets support Harris whilst still linking to the original article gives the inherently biased and purpose-driven titles more credibility than they would otherwise engender.

The fact that the article headlines resemble real news headlines (for example, “Trump Will Pardon J6 Rioters - VP Harris Protects Democracy”) makes the ads even more misleading. It is rather interesting to observe that the doctored headlines do not follow AP Style, the predominant format for newspapers, by capitalizing all words in the title. It is unclear whether this mistake was intentional, although given the realistic nature of the ads, the flaw may not have been deliberate.

News outlets such as NPR, AP and Reuters build credibility by maintaining a non-biased perspective when reporting news. When the Harris-Walz campaign uses these advertising tactics, which Google stresses are legal and have been deployed by candidates on both sides in the past, they are essentially leveraging the credibility these organizations have to push a campaign message.

Google makes over 50% of its revenue through Google Search ads. These ads are most effective if they are as indistinguishable as possible from organic search results. While product marketing may benefit from this mindset, mixing in ads with real search results (especially with re-written headlines) can be dangerous and misleading during election cycles.

Facebook banned campaigns from embedding news articles in ads and altering their titles in an attempt to reduce misinformation on the platform starting in 2017. Google must follow its big tech competitor’s lead to ensure that the election is not harmed by misinformation and that no candidate, regardless of party affiliation, can benefit from altering news article titles.