Philly sheriff posts flattering but phony headlines to campaign site — then offers odd disclaimer when caught

The Philadelphia sheriff’s team posted a series of flattering but phony news headlines on her campaign website – then issued a nonchalant disclaimer when its fake-news scheme was exposed.

Democrat Rochelle Bilal’s first term was marred by accusations that her office lost scores of guns, tried to misuse funds to double her salary and hired a top deputy who moonlights as a defense lawyer — but visitors to her campaign website are met with glowing headlines about her accomplishments.

The only problem is: those articles don’t exist, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The supposed headlines came from reputable local outlets like NBC10, CBS3, WHYY and the Inquirer, but they were removed from the site Friday after the newspaper reached out for comment because it was unable to verify any of the headlines as authentic, the report said.

By Monday afternoon, the campaign had reposted the supposed headlines to its website, accompanied by a disclaimer that said it makes “no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information provided.”

Only three of the items — all press releases from the sheriff’s office — had clickable links.

The fake article names combined with their supposed outlets of publication did not turn up any hits on Google News — as legitimate archived digital articles should — when searched by The Post.

An NBC10 spokesperson reportedly said that none of the 12 supposed articles credited to the outlet about “her November 2019 election, police reform initiatives, distribution of free gun locks, suspension of evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, or tips for domestic abuse survivors,” could be located by digital editors.

Stories that did loosely match the content of articles the campaign site boosted about had different headlines and publication dates, according to the report.

Bilal did not respond to requests for comment from the paper, and her spokeswoman said the issue would have to be addressed by her campaign manager. But the spokeswoman was reportedly unable to identify the manager.

Neither Bilal’s office nor campaign immediately responded to a request for comment from The Post.

Watchdogs hypothesized that the campaign had used artificial intelligence to fabricate the headlines, which they said could lead the public to be more untrusting of both elected officials and the media.

Voters bombarded with fake news “just assume everything is a lie,” Peter Loge, who leads the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, told the outlet.

“That is dangerous.”

“You just keep spewing stuff out and it fatigues people and they don’t know what to believe,” Matthew Jordan, professor of media studies and director of Penn State’s News Literacy Initiative, told the Inquirer.

“This works in that kind of environment, where people are exhausted and nobody is going to check anymore,” Jordan said. “Most people are probably looking at this on their phones and just scrolling along.”

Most of the scrapped headlines had elements of truth and seemed believable, according to the paper.

A fake WHYY headline with a publication date of March 16, 2020 reportedly read, “Philly Sheriff’s Office Announces Temporary Halt to Evictions Amid Coronavirus Outbreak.”

A day earlier, the outlet had published a story entitled “Philadelphia halts evictions as coronavirus bears down,” but neither Bilal or her office was mentioned in it, according to the report.

“That is how misinformation works,” Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told the paper. “It has to be believable. It has to be plausible. That’s what’s so insidious about it.”

Other articles appeared to be complete works of fiction, including a supposed Jan. 29, 2020 Inquirer article headlined: “Philly sheriff’s office to digitize sheriff sale process, reduce confusion and fraud.”

The newspaper said it did not publish any pieces about about Bilal or her office on or around that date.

The top hits of a Google News search of Rochelle Bilal were far from flattering. They included Monday’s Inquirer exposé and 2023 reports about dozens of missing guns from her office, FBI interrogations of her staffers and her denial of misuse of funds amid her attempted pay raise controversy.