A shocking exchange occurred on Univision’s Linea de Fuego (Firing Line), during host Luis Carlos Vélez’s exchange with Maca Casado, Director of Hispanic Media for the Harris-Walz campaign. Under pressure from Velez over the Harris campaign’s use of fake headlines in their Google ads, Casado flippantly told Velez that this was pretty commonplace.

Watch as Casado refuses to say whether the practice is right or wrong: 

VIX LINEA DE FUEGO

8/14/24

6:18 PM

LUIS CARLOS VELEZ: I want to ask you about this, because this is important. An Axios report states that Kamala Harris’s staff are purchasing Google ads which display manipulated headlines and descriptions of news articles, for the purpose of bolstering the vice president’s image. What is your response to this?

MACA CASADO: Look. First of all, this is a practice that is done by every political campaign. This isn’t anything new or innovative. This is something that all political campaigns do. We are absolutely not manipulating any information. We’re showing the headlines, and we put some pieces beneath those headlines wherein we add content. But this is definitely a practice engaged by every campaign.

VELEZ: But doesn’t it seem to you…? Let’s say- if it’s a common political practice, that’s fine, but you who are a new campaign, and you who are speaking to the public, you’re manipulating headlines. This doesn’t make it right…or does it?

CASADO: I’ve already responded, Luis Carlos, this is a practice done by many political campaigns in order to deliver their message to different communities. 

VELEZ: Yes. But is that wrong, Maca? Or is that okay?

CASADO: Look. Campaigns have guidelines that they follow. We are doing yet another campaign strategy in order to reach out to voters.

VELEZ: All right. 

As our Free Speech America colleagues Catherine Salgado and Gabriela Pariseau noted:

The Google Ads Transparency Center, which AllSides cited, shows that Harris paid to link fake headlines with popular news sites. “Some of the Google ads display pro-Harris slogans while linking to articles mostly from news sources AllSides rates as Lean Left, such as AP, PBS, and CNN and some Center-rated sources such as Reuters,” AllSides reported. Other outlets that the campaign used included NPR, The Independent, Time and The Guardian.

One fake headline the Harris campaign misleadingly attributed to the “Lean Left” media outlet The Guardian read, “VP Harris = Repro Leader.” It was paired with the summary: “VP Harris is a champion for reproductive freedom and will stop Trump's abortion bans.” Another headline misleadingly attributed to Reuters flatly claimed, “Inflation Is Down” with a summary that read, “Under the Biden-Harris Administration ‘The U.S. is winning the inflation fight.’”

Harris’s campaign ads didn’t simply rewrite article summaries and headlines to favorably frame her policies. It also created headlines to make Trump look bad. 

This is scandalous. And, as Salgado and Pariseau noted, this happens at a time when there is all sorts of censorship going on against conservatives- in the name of “protecting the public from disinformation”.

More troubling, that the Harris campaign spokesperson would dismiss concerns over the practice as simply something “everyone does”, “nothing new or innovative”.

As Fox News reports, the journalist who broke the story is already trying to sweep it under the rug:

"It's a common practice in the commercial advertising world that doesn't violate Google's policies, but the ads mimic real news results from Search closely enough that they have news outlets caught off guard," Axios reporter Sara Fischer wrote.

Just imagine the outrage had the Trump campaign been caught manipulating headlines in Google ads. The dudgeon would be stratospheric. 

But there is a double standard, and things therefore are (D)ifferent, which is how we end up with Univision’s Luis Carlos Velez being the only national journalist to confront a Harris campaign spokesperson on what is, by all accounts, a scandal- especially when combined with the aforementioned spokesperson’s attempt to wiggle out of the question.