EXCERPT:
BEDINGFIELD: “Yeah. Well, this is — this is part of paid advertising. I mean, if you are somebody who’s reading a news outlet on your phone, you’ll see embedded ads come up sometimes in those stories that, you know, on first glance look like a story by the outlet you’re reading. But if you don’t, you know, if you look at it more closely, it says sponsored content. I mean, this is something that the search engines do. It’s part of the way they generate ad revenue. So there’s nothing about it that is, you know, violates their terms or is in any way unethical. I mean, this is, this is part of the way that paid advertising works. And, you know, you’ll see it. It’s certainly not just political campaigns who do it. I mean, just as I am reading things online, sometimes I’ll double, you know, I’ll sort of like double look at something because it seems, it feels like it’s — it’s an authentic piece of content. And then you see it’s paid. So it is incumbent on the, the viewer, the reader, the consumer to have a discerning eye not just on political content but on other advertising.”