WDAY Radio, a local news outlet in Fargo, North Dakota, is considering legal action after the Kamala Harris campaign deceptively edited WDAY headlines to make it look like they supported her in an ad campaign, its president told the Daily Caller.
The Harris campaign has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads to make it appear as if major news organizations explicitly support her, a bombshell Axios report revealed Tuesday.
WDAY was the only family-owned outlet listed in the report. Other outlets who had their content manipulated by Harris’ team included Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, CNN, The Guardian, The Independent and more.
“We feel insulted and violated by what was done here,” Steve Hallstrom, the President and Managing Partner of Flag Family Media, which owns WDAY Radio, told the Daily Caller.
“You have a political campaign that used our news brand and our URL to effectively lie to people about the headline we wrote,” Hallstrom said. “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. So as of today, we’re starting to make some calls here. We are considering all of our options here, including legal action.”
Other outlets said they were wholly unaware of the seemingly-duplicitous ad campaign.
“AP was neither aware of this practice nor would we allow these to run on our website,” an AP spokesperson told the Daily Caller.
“We were unaware Reuters was being featured in these advertisements. We are looking into the matter,” Reuters told the Caller.
“It is entirely wrong for anyone to put fake headlines under ‘The Independent’ brand,” a spokesperson for the outlet told the Caller. “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.”
Hallstrom questioned why the Harris campaign would believe the ads are a good idea to begin with.
“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,” he said.