A Brief Review of a Supposed Multi-sided News Source : ground.news

Now that AI is catching on with everything, why not apply that to news so that citizens can truly get all sides of a news story?  Sounds like a good idea at first glance.  But those of us in I/T know that while artificial “intelligence” sounds like it could be a nirvana of truthfulness, under the covers there is still programming, programmed by programmers, who themselves are human (not artificial), may or may not be intelligent, and inherently not unbiased.  So I’m always skeptical of any news story I read or see, even from sources that claim to be showing me “all sides” to a story.  

Full disclosure… I am a conservative (or what the left would call a right-wing extremist fascist).  I believe in free speech, gun rights, America, God, you should judge a person by the content of their character not by the color of their skin, capitalism, and that men should not compete in women’s sports unless it’s a sort of Billy Jean King vs Bobby Riggs thing.  I get most of my news from either the source itself (what the actual subject of the news says or does) or from The Babylon Bee, America’s #2 fake news site, behind CNN.  With that said, I recently heard about ground.news.  

At first glance, it looked pretty helpful.  It shows a news story, and the number of news outlets deemed left, center, or right which reported on the story.  It has some nice graphs and links to the actual stories.  Now, right away my critical thinking kicks in because I’ve seen that Media Bias graphic that shows the bell curve of all the news outlets and where they are on the spectrum.  Left or right?  More or less reliable?  The fact that PBS, NPR, and AP are anywhere near the middle immediately discredits this - what would otherwise be a - nice graphic, IN MY OPINION.  But I digress...

Back to ground.news... So someone (AI programmed by perfectly intelligent unbiased humans, I hope) has to determine where each news source falls on the left/center/right continuum. Maybe they get it directly from this chart.

But let’s just say they are 100% accurate on that.  Then my next question is how much of the ground.news content is "sins of commission" or "sins of omission."  The former would mean this site itself is making up or skewing news to mislead the reader.  The latter would mean this site leaves out some news for whatever reason.  If I’m coming to ground.news as my primary unbiased multi-sided news aggregation source, I would expect to see all sides of all the important news.

I decided to do a few quick tests of some recent news that, as a conservative, I found interesting. I’d like to see what the other side has to say (even though I’d already seen this because I read opposition comments and stories on social media all the time).

News Story 1:   Transgender sports ban heads to NC governor's desk

Here's that story on ground.news showing the CENTER summary:

Here's that story on ground.news showing the LEFT summary:

I found the descriptions between the left and center to be almost identical. I was pleased to see that an exact report from our local ABC11 news was cited as left-leaning, and it’s one I had retweeted a few weeks ago. Strangely, there was “not enough unique coverage to create a summary” for the right. I call B.S. on that. To get the “right” viewpoint on this story, you merely need to replace the phrase “transgender girls” with “biological males”. I quickly did a search and found a story that summarized that viewpoint.  

 

Without this "right" viewpoint, the reader might think that the mean old Republicans just hate transgender people in general and don't want them to compete in sports.  That's basically what the headline of the left and center articles says and/or implies.  The right (and correct, in my opinion) headline should be: "North Carolina has given final legislative approval to a bill banning biological males from playing on school sports teams for biological females."  THAT is the viewpoint from those on the right that ground.news failed to share.    

So I think this report from ground.news fails on both sins of commission (for equating the left and center viewpoints) and sins of omission (for omitting the right viewpoint).

News Story 2:   FBI defies subpoena on Biden corruption case

They only had one story on this one, and not only was it right, it was from (wait for it)... RUSSIA!  And of course, had an extra warning!

Well, that should immediately be disregarded because we all know the Republicans and Russians are one and the same (according to the media from the past 7 years).  This news is so much disinformation, there are no left-leaning stories about it!  But wait, this actually happened!   In fact, here's a report from the actual US House Oversight Committee website.  

Now, I am as distrusting of the government as anyone, even when the Republicans are in charge of something.  But come on, ground.news and news organizations on the left, there are more than enough curious things going on with these Bidens and the House is looking into it and subpoenaed the FBI.  And when they stiff-arm the House and fail to comply, that's not news?  Oh but wait, the left (or center, if you think NBC is not left) did report on this.  

But ground.news failed to pick that up.  So if you were searching ground.news for info you heard from your crazy conservative co-worker about the FBI not providing documentation to the House Oversight Committee, you might quickly conclude this is just more Russia disinformation to help Trump because that's essentially what ground.news showed you.  So I deem that one definitely a sin of omission.

News Story 3:   Hunter demanded $10M from Chinese energy firm because 'Bidens are the best,' have 'connections'

Here's another one that only has sources on the right, according to ground.news:

In this case, there are 2 (or 3?) and none are Russian.  Yet, here's one of MANY other stories about this from left and/or right news sources.  

There are also stories about this where Joe "The Big Guy" Biden denies involvement in his son's international business dealings, but you've probably heard those.  If you went to ground.news to fact-check this "conspiracy theory" from your crazy MAGA neighbor, you might just think it was a big nothingburger.  Again, these are sins of omission on the part of ground.news.  

Granted, I cherry-picked three stories I knew about to test my hypothesis.  But the results from ground.news were similar.  In one, the right-leaning counter viewpoint was excluded completely, thereby presenting to the reader only one side of a story.  In the other two, only the right-leaning articles were shown, which could imply the stories have no merit or are more examples of right-wing conspiracy theories, especially when one is single-sourced from Russia Today.  Yet, there were corroborating stories from the left that ground.news omitted.  These sins of omission, though similar in act, are misleading in very different ways.  One omits a contrary viewpoint.  The other omits a corroborating viewpoint.  But the result is the same: the reader is no more informed had they simply watched CNN, MSNBC, or FOX alone.  In fact, the reader may be MORE misled because they went to ground.news thinking they were finally getting a balanced view of reality.

I also went to ground.news' home landing page, assuming they would tell me what was important as "TODAY'S NEWS".  What I found was that they were leading with many fluff stories about things that really have no impact on me and the future of this country (in my opinion), such as the economy/inflation, the illegal immigration crisis, rising crime due to anti-police trends, the weaponization of federal government agencies, and the culture wars which are dividing this nation more than any time in our history.  It could be that I need to subscribe and set my profile to show me the news I'm most interested in.  Or it could be that on a Saturday afternoon, there is no important news for me.  They did have a section called "Blindspots" which seems to show stories on both left and right which are exclusively covered by one but not the other (and perhaps warrant the alternative coverage).

In conclusion, I think the key thing to be aware of when using such sites is the sin of omission.  This is as powerful a tool as outright fake news.  Both were systematically used in 2020 by left ideologues in the government to force social media outlets to omit the Hunter Biden laptop story (omission) under the lie that the laptop story was Russia disinformation (commission).  Additionally, users who shared the story were banned (censorship).  As we now know, this was the true conspiracy.

So my warning to anyone using ground.news (or any other news aggregator): Don't assume you're getting a balanced and holistic view of the news, even if that's the core of their mission.  Remember that behind every news aggregation site, whether done by AI or Ivy-league dropouts in their parents' basements, there are humans with biases, whether or not intentional.  And it's worth noting that numerous analyses indicate that journalists, in general, are heavily comprised of left-leaning folks when examining campaign contributions.  This article alone cites cases of 96% (Democrat) vs 4% (Republican) during a 2015-2016 span.  Another was 94% (D) (2008-2016).  Another was 65% D in the 2010 election cycle.  Another was 87% D or liberal causes between 2004-2007.  So when I hear that some good-hearted journalists are getting together to form a venture to help provide "balanced news" to citizens who just want to know the truth, I am highly skeptical.

And that is why I trust The Babylon Bee.  It may be satire at first, but if you wait long enough, it sometimes turns out to be more truth than anything else.