‘They Lied to Every Single Person’: Radio Station Eyes Legal Action over Harris Campaign’s Deceptive Google Ads

A family-owned radio station is considering suing the Democratic presidential nominee and a Big Tech figurehead over deceptive political ads. Earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign was exposed for editing Google text ads attached to news headlines, giving the impression that major and local news outlets were outright endorsing or promoting Harris’s White House bid. One of the news outlets that was targeted was the family-owned, North Dakota-based WDAY Radio. According to the Daily Caller, WDAY is considering legal action against the Harris campaign and Google.

“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. 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.”

The Harris campaign spent over $750,000 in August alone to attach its ads to news stories that appear in Google searches. The campaign crafted its own headlines and attached text in order to make it appear that WDAY and other news outlets — like the Associated Press, USA Today, The Guardian, The Independent, Time Magazine, NPR, PBS, CNN, CBS News, and more — were promoting, supporting, or endorsing the Harris campaign. When links to the targeted news sites or news stories were clicked, users were directed to the original news stories, not the ads written by the Harris campaign.

Spokesmen for the various news outlets targeted by the Harris campaign have asserted that they were unaware that their names, brands, logos, and links were being used in this way. For example, a spokesman for The Guardian said, “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with The Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”

The ads attached to WDAY links used the headlines “Harris Picks Tim Walz — 215,000 MN Families Win,” “Learn About VP Pick Tim Walz — Harris Picks Tim Walz,” and “Harris Picks Tim Walz — Tim Walz Tapped For VP.” The text of the ads, according to Google Ads Transparency Center, boasted of Walz expanding the child tax credit in Minnesota. Previously, Harris and her campaign have attacked Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who was selected as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, for promoting the child tax credit.

Google has insisted that the Harris campaign is in no way violating the tech giant’s rules or policies. Others have noted that while editing text in ads is not an altogether uncommon practice, it is rarely used in political campaigns. Google and several media bias watchdog groups have confirmed that Trump is not running any similar ads.