Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) is demanding that Big Tech company Google provide some answers after it was reported that Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has been manipulating past headlines in news articles from different outlets to use them as search ads.
In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Gooden said this is allowing the Harris campaign to buy ads that “mislead readers by linking to news stories with altered headlines that appear favorable to the vice president.”
He called out Google’s actions, saying that this is “yet another disturbing example of election interference by the world’s largest search engine.” He sees the manipulation of news headlines as “a deliberate attempt to mislead voters by falsely suggesting endorsements from major news publications.”
An analysis released earlier this week showed that the campaign of Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz changed headlines from different news outlets to generate more favorable results in searches and reposted them as advertisements, labeled as ‘sponsored’ in Google search results.
Gooden accused the search engine firm of a disturbing track record of implicit bias and election interference that overwhelmingly benefits one political party and warned that if “Google is unable or unwilling to take basic steps to safeguard the integrity of our elections, I will work with my colleagues to use every tool at our disposal to ensure accountability.”
