According to recent reports, a family-owned news outlet in North Dakota is considering taking legal action against Vice President Kamala Harris and Google over “misleading” and “dishonest” tactics that it claims were used to portray the Democratic presidential nominee more favorably. Allegedly, WDAY Radio, based in Fargo, had one of its headlines edited on Google Search to make it appear as if the writers were endorsing Harris.
Similar incidents have occurred with other prominent news outlets nationwide regarding Google search results about Kamala Harris. Reportedly, the Harris campaign has paid for sponsored ad results with Google, which will appear at the top of a page with false headlines such as “Harris Will Lower Health Care Costs” by NPR and “Inflation is Down” by Reuters. Regarding WDAY Radio, the outlet is furious after their coverage was allegedly manipulated to say, “Harris Picks Tim Walz – 215,000 MN Families Win.”
According to Steve Hallstrom, the President and Managing Partner of Flag Family Media, which owns WDAY Radio, “We feel insulted and violated by what was done here.” He slammed the campaign for abusing his brand and headline to lie. “You have a political campaign that used our news brand and our URL to effectively lie to people about the headline we wrote,” he said.
The president of the media company continued blasting the “dishonest” actions that damage the company’s brand reputation. “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.” Hallstrom outlined how they are considering legal action. “So as of today, we’re starting to make some calls here. We are considering all of our options here, including legal action,” he said.
Hallstrom continued, blasting the deceptive practice. “We never wrote anything close to what is alleged here. 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,” he said.
“I’ve heard the excuses about how this meets the approval of the Google Ad criteria people, and I don’t care,” the managing partner maintained. “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.”
He emphasized, “There are things that are right and there are things that are wrong, and this clearly is wrong. This is clearly leading, it’s clearly deceptive, it’s dishonest, and it was done obviously recklessly without thinking about what’s really happening here. And I don’t know who on the Harris staff made the decision that this was a good strategy. But I can’t believe that on the whole that that organization, that campaign would, top to bottom, feel like this is a tactful and a principled approach to getting the word out about their candidate.”
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