You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows
—Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Ah, but when it comes to other types of news, perhaps you do.
With so much life-threatening funky monkey business going on right now I can’t decide what’s most important for me to write about: the Federal budget buster bill. Military birthday salute. Israel attacks Iran as Gazans starve. Military occupation of downtown LA. Political assassinations. No Kings protests. You name it. Almost all disgusting.
Given it’s so hard to choose and because every news outlet has some sort of spin, I decided to write about how news stories we consume get slanted to cater to an outlet’s audience.
Most of us consume a lot of news, but in wildly different ways. Broadcast and cable TV. News media websites. Blogs and podcasts. Late night comedians. Social media. And some people still read printed newspapers and magazines, believe it or not.
We are loathe to consult sources that tend to be contrary to our political predilections and that leads to failures to communicate beyond our comfort zones. Even relatively neutral news aggregators like Yahoo News or the Associated Press don’t evaluate their sources for you.
And so, we tend to silo our news sources, feeding out of the same troughs as our fellow political travelers. We’ve got liberal news media, conservative news media, factual news, unsourced news, and fake news, each proudly branded with its own biases and niche audiences. I read the NY Times, you read the NY Post; I watch PBS News Hour, you watch Fox News; I follow The Young Turks online, you follow Breitbart; You frequent X, I BlueSky. Same difference it’s not.
Wouldn’t it be great, I have often thought, if there were news sites that covered current affairs from a variety of perspectives, transparently and without spin? Because I truly want to know where people I disagree with pick up dis/information without getting indigestion.
And last week I found one fitting that description that I think you ought to know about, a website that claims to process nearly 60,000 articles from over 50,000 different news sources every day and aggregates them into stories.
It’s called Ground News, and it’s been around since 2019. Each story it covers contains news stories from a variety of sources and political perspectives (Left | Center | Right, they label them). It categorizes each publication it links to, letting you choose articles to click on, each of which Ground News summarizes.
Here, for example, is a page of articles about recent political assassinations under the title:
Vance Boelter Arrested in Targeted Shootings of Minnesota Lawmakers, which I viewed on 6/17/25 8PM ET and selected Bias Comparison.
The 209 articles are from all over the world, each categorized left/center/right. Many are from foreign newspapers and websites, which Ground News will translate for you if you wish. On the right side of the page is a bias summary.
It lists some bias statistics and shows logos of the publications carrying the story as sort of a histogram reading left to right. Below that are logos for news sources it hasn’t categorized. Each icon is a button that links to the story the page refers to.
This is real objectivity and transparency. For a change.
You probably want to know how Ground News classifies publications’ political leanings. All I know is what they say:
“The Ground News bias ratings assess the political bias of news publications. They are based on the average rating of three independent news monitoring organizations: All Sides, Ad Fontes Media, and Media Bias Fact Check. Each news monitoring organization has their own methodology – including editorial reviews, blind bias surveys, independent reviews, and third party research. The analysis is done in the context of the U.S. political system.
“We use a combination of these ratings to offer the most comprehensive analysis. The ratings take into consideration things like wording, story choices and political affiliation. This rating does not measure the bias of specific news articles. The analysis is done at the publication level.
“You might come across a news publication that has not been rated by one or two of these organizations, in which case we take an average of the ratings available. Some news organizations don’t have any ratings, and therefore aren’t included in the Bias Bar. These ratings are updated on an ongoing basis.”
I came across Ground News in a truly funny way. I was on BlueSky and checked to see if Randy Rainbow was there, and he was. Randy Rainbow (yes, it’s his real name) is a comedian and songster who lampoons political figures with fake interviews and repurposed show tunes on YouTube and promotes himself at randyrainbow.com. Randy is flagrantly gay, affecting sparkly pink spectacles and often appears in drag. All his productions originate from the second bedroom of his apartment in Queens, NY. You must watch his videos to keep up to date!
Take in his most recent production, in which Randy pretends to interview DoD Sec’y Pete Hegseth. Randy also takes a minute to promote his sponsor, Ground News, so pay attention:
Even if Randy Rainbow isn’t your cup of tea, whether you get your feed from Fox or PBS, it won’t hurt to sign up at Ground News to be able to see all sides of the stories you care about. Basic subscriptions are free. Check out their Blind Spot page, which highlights stories that are under-covered by either left- or right-leaning news outlets. See how many current events you know nothing about.
Disclaimer: I’m just a subscriber to Ground News and, unlike Randy, receive no compensation from them. I just want you all to know how you can become better informed.
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I own to my immaturity. I would never spend time reading opinions which are anathema to me. I recognise that if I were carrying out serious research I might find Ground News necessary, but this 90-year old man has lost patience with right-wing shenanigans.
@San I am unfortunately inflicted with a desire to psych out the MAGA and other right-wing mentalities. The more I can understand about what motivates them, the more able to deal with their shit I’ll be.