What The Tech App of the Day: Ground News
BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter
If you get a lot of your news from Facebook, X, or Google News, there’s a good chance you’re not seeing the full picture.
That’s because the stories you see on social media are chosen by an algorithm. Those algorithms are designed to show you stories you’re more likely to click on. Over time, that can mean you’re seeing more stories that match what you already believe, and fewer stories that offer a different perspective.
There’s an app called Ground News that helps solve that problem by showing how different news organizations are covering the same story.
Ground News collects articles from thousands of news sources and groups them by story. When you tap on a story, you can see coverage from multiple news organizations all on one screen.
The app then shows an indicator that reveals whether a news source tends to lean left, lean right, or stay closer to the center. This makes it easy to compare how different outlets are reporting the same story. In many cases, the facts are the same, but the tone, wording, and details they choose to emphasize can
be very different.
One of the most interesting features in the app is called Blindspot. This shows stories that are heavily covered by news organizations on one side of the political spectrum, but barely covered by outlets on the other side. In other words, these are stories you might never see in your social media feed, simply because of how algorithms and audiences work.
The app also includes information about who owns each news organization. Media ownership can sometimes influence coverage, and this feature adds another layer of transparency for readers who want to know more about where their news is coming from.
Ground News is not designed to tell you what to think about a story. Instead, it shows you how the same story can be reported differently depending on the source, and it makes it easy to compare coverage for yourself.
According to the Pew Research Center, more than half of Americans say they get at least some of their news from social media. If that’s the case, tools like this can help you see a broader view of the news instead of just the version an algorithm thinks you want to see.
Ground News is free to download with limited features. A subscription, which costs about forty dollars per year, unlocks more detailed comparisons, unbiased data, and additional features. The app is available for both iPhone and Android.
