News Media Outlets Should Denounce the Harris Campaign Immediately (Opinion)

In (no longer Soviet) Russia, the state writes the news headlines. In America, the politicians rewrite the headlines, at least that’s what the Harris campaign has been doing. And any news media outlet which does not immediately denounce the campaign for manipulating their own news headlines should go ahead and just publicly announce that they have no intention of being an unbiased news source.

For those who know me, you know that I don’t really care for either major political party’s candidates, and would much rather we just elect a dog in as president. However, the recent actions of the Harris campaign are so egregious against the first amendment and freedom of press, that I can’t remain silent.

Axios recently reported that the Harris campaign is using Google ads with misleading news headlines to promote her candidacy for President. While misleading headlines in advertisements isn’t anything new, what is especially egregious is the usage of these Google ads to rewrite news headlines to be more favorable towards Harris. In most cases these advertisements have the required disclaimer showing that it’s an advertisement from the Harris campaign, but in some cases this disclaimer is completely missing, such as in the case of NPR and Reuters headlines which we observed on the Harris campaign Google Ads page. We have included screenshots of these ads below. These headlines were never published by either news outlet as far as we can tell.

This sort of manipulative advertising further destroys the credibility of news media outlets – credibility which is already questionable according to the Washington Post, which found that 7 in 10 voters don’t trust the news media to report on politics accurately.

While these advertisements are not against Google’s policies and the lack of proper disclosure has claimed to be a “technical glitch”, the ethics of this sort of deceptive advertising leveraging what should be impartial news outlet content is ethically questionable, and no self-respecting news outlet should stand for it.

So, with all of that said, we at Radio Free Hub City hereby denounce the Harris Campaign for their egregious manipulation of news headlines. Now let me be clear, this is not an endorsement of Donald Trump, as we do not endorse politicians at a local or national level. However, we will absolutely not remain silent on such actions by the Harris campaign, and will encourage our readers not to vote for her, should you wish to see unbiased news which is not government controlled. The actions by the Harris campaign show a clear intent to manipulate the news media, and that is not something we take lightly.

Opinion article by Ken Buckler, President of Radio Free Hub City.

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