Kamala Harris’s campaign is editing news headlines in Google ads to make them seem more favorable

Kamala Harris’s team has provoked backlash for its practice of running Google ad campaigns featuring manipulated headlines from published news articles to make them appear more favorable to her campaign.

The headlines which appear on Google as sponsored posts link to articles about Harris and her rival, Donald Trump, in nearly a dozen publications, most of which have confirmed they had no idea their headlines were being repurposed and used in a political campaign.

Harris’s spin doctors tweaked the original published headlines, and the accompanying text underneath, to make them appear on face value on Google’s search platform as if they’d been written more in the vice president’s favor. The ads included a link to the original stories.

Harris’ campaign team has edited headlines from nearly a dozen outlets including The Independent, Guardian, Reuters, CNN, AP, and CBS News, according to an analysis from Axios. Technically, it doesn’t violate Google’s terms and conditions because the content is labeled as “sponsored.” However, readers could be left confused about who actually wrote the hyper-partisan headlines.

A spokesperson for The Independent condemned the practice: “It is entirely wrong for anyone to put fake headlines under The Independent brand. We object fiercely and believe it is undermining of what politics and journalism should be about. It is misleading to muddle fake headlines with any campaign trying to persuade people to vote in an election, and must be widely condemned. We will be seeking their removal.”

Regulations surrounding political advertising are murky. But Harris’s campaign may be pushing boundaries, says Kartij Ahuja, who founded Delaware-based marketing company GrowthScribe.

“The regulations are