Context is EVERYTHING and this app shines a clear light on it!
I love this approach to news. I've come to realize every news source has (a) its bias, and (b) its level of commitment to journalistic factuality. This context is EVERYTHING, and this app visually provides the contextual lens through which each news article is written. For each news story, you get to see the spread of news sources covering it, and then diving in, how each one choses to tell the story. Even the difference in headlines is telling and revealing. HIGHLY useful to anyone really wanting to understand the world.
Ground News offers a perspective on the news that I've found nowhere else -- it shares with readers how today's news stories are presented (or not) by a wide range of news sources across the political spectrum. Ground News doesn't take sides or promote a perspective, but it gives insight into biases, intentional or not, from a wide and global range of news providers. It gives me an understanding of how information is presented to the public -- and that's new in itself.
We need to see the story from all sides, when possible. This is an excellent app to do just that! So many sources are used to cover a wide varitey of topics and show the biases on each story. Very cool app!! The newest update makes it much more similar to the iPhone app. I highly recommend this app to anyone looking to see the bigger picture!!
This website is everything and has everything! I love it so much and the developers that work behind it are very responsive and helpful. I wouldn't use any other news app.
The app overall was pretty meh. It appeared to make an attempt at providing insight, but I have my doubts. I signed up for a premium account, and despite that they were still sharing my email address with the newsites I visited. This is obvious because I started getting email from a bunch of random news sites I'd only ever heard of through their app. The app may very well have warned me, but if I'm paying, I don't want to horse around with something like that.
I think this is a fantastic app! I does a great job of showing biases in media, which I think is so very important to know. I would absolutly recomend this.
The Mac app has improved slowly, but one glaring issue remains: you cannot share headline articles using built-in share sheets like you can in the iOS and iPadOS counterparts. It's the #1 reason I have to deduct my stars... this feature is an essential part of the app for getting news out and about. Thank you!
Including Infowars alongside actual legitimate news sources is a disgrace. It does a disservice to what I thought was the actual mission of Ground News, which is to try to cut through bias and arrive at a view that more closely represents reality. Including conspiracy theory sites that peddle lies and propaganda as presumably legitimate news sources is a travesty and just serves to propagate more disinformation. I have canceled and will not be back.
The Safari extension clutters the browser making it unattractive, and somewhat unintuitive to navigate. Clicking on the extenition would be much more useful if it opened a drop-down window with a dashboard and resources.
This is an updated and revised review which I feel is appropriate following a very informative genuine response from the developer. My original review complained of annoying ads in linked third party articles rendering many of them unreadable or sometimes being directed to articles that were behind a paywall. I noted in that review that these ad problems are in no way unique to Ground News and that Ground News app itself is an ad-free experience but that I felt it hampered the reader experience. The developer replied with a genuine and sympathetic response but clarified some additional things including the fact that they do not in any way profit from popups. I learned from the developer that there are ways of filtering and adjusting your feed so that paywall articles can be screened. Also, the developer indicates that an external browser function is available to better deal with pop ups and such like. I’ll be trying out these features and settings but overall I am very satisfied with what Ground News does, how it helps when it comes to news biases and the sheer breadth of content. It is clearly highly customizable - perhaps in a way that I didn’t fully understand at first. And of course, any developer who takes the time to reach out personally to address a concern is serious about doing the right thing and their product.
Worked in news for some years and learned to hate it. I worked when there was a new ISIS or mass shooting event almost daily. Stopped following news altogether once I left that gig. I knew that if I wanted the real news, I needed to do legwork and compare articles, sources, find a 3rd party commenter, but i have little desire to do this for every story. This app makes it simple to compare headlines, and even quickly read articles from different leanings of sources. Sometimes just for a laugh from fringe stories, but it helps me quickly get a balanced view that I can dig into with ease. I want the devs to keep thinking and finding new ways to accomplish this, but features like blindspot and personal stats are great starts to making me feel like comprehensively understanding the local and world news stories are a few easy taps away. If you understand anything about the news climate, you’ll see the immediate value in an app like this. In its current state it does still feel like a nice beta, but it’s got the right idea and is on a path toward something not just great, but necessary for navigating online news content.
I have been using this as my primary news source for over a year. I value the ability to see multiple sides of a story including photos and videos relevant t the topic. I am still getting used to the new update. It definitely feels less clunky and much smoother to navigate, however, it is a real shame to see that the comments section has been removed in the new update. It was a largely unmoderated place (save a strict filter for inappropriate words) where people could speak their mind on topics. I greatly value the ability to see and discuss different perspectives . With that comes some toxicity, but that is anywhere people speak and people were free to turn it off or mute if they didn’t like it. It was so popular that many topics seemed to be exceeding the amount of space GN allotted for comments. I am very sad to see that instead of expanding it, they chose to shut it down. America is suppose to be a place where free speech is protected yet corporations continue to impede that ability more and more. There are so few venues to discus perspectives and challenge ideas because corporations continue to strangle out discussions and information that they do not like. I am not happy that Ground News chose to destroy their free speech platform (however small it was) which closed down one more venue that allowed the discussion of current events and perspectives.
I would like to express my appreciation for the features your application offers, particularly the ability to compare perspectives across the political spectrum. However, I would like to address an area where the user experience could be enhanced. My preference is to access news content directly through ad-blocking browsers like Brave, which efficiently remove advertisements, providing a cleaner reading experience. While I acknowledge the presence of a reader mode within your app, it does not fully substitute for viewing the original site in its intended format, especially when it comes to visual content. Currently, selecting the option to open a news site externally redirects me to the Ground News site, offering only a summary rather than the full content I seek. This limitation hinders my ability to engage with the news in the most immersive and unobstructed manner possible. I kindly suggest considering an update that allows for direct redirection to the news sites via ad-blocking browsers. This enhancement would significantly improve content accessibility and user satisfaction, aligning with the desires of users who prefer an ad-free browsing experience while engaging with news articles and their accompanying visual elements. Your consideration of this feedback would be greatly valued, as it would elevate the overall utility and appeal of your application.
Ground news makes an attempt at non-partisan news presentation and ranking—bravo!—but is mostly unsuccessful. Witness the highly inaccurate and non-factual characterization of Florida’s law that prohibits the sexualization of minors. Ground calls “news” sites who call the law “Don’t Say Gay” Center leaning and Factual. This is a clear propaganda term, and couldn’t be further from the truth. A simple reading of the short law shows it is not aimed at any LGBTQ… credo. It is possible to re-rank sites at least for ones self, but heck if I can find it. Please make it easier for us to rerank sites based on such obvious tell tales as this. EDITED: Kudos to Ground for their rapid response. They use independent ratings organizations to assign the bias, to ensure their own biases don’t slant their news. Unfortunately, we have all discovered almost all “fact checkers” primarily obfuscate the facts, and lean heavily left themselves. This is a societal pronoem, and Ground is caught up by it as are we all. I applaud their attempts to deliver news with an attempt at rating. They also told me how to adjust the bias ratings for myself. Thanks for that, Ground! For their efforts and quick response, I added back a star. My finding above stands, however, for my reasons above. I will continue subscribing to Ground, and resort to adjusting the bias scores myself.
I just updated the app on my iPhone 15 Plus (latest OS as well). The Notification bug still exists: the app informs me I have x-number of updates waiting, but when I go to the update(s) the app tells me there’s nothing here to read. This “bug” was confirmed to me as a “known bug”, when someone reached out to me for further information, telling me so. As a paid user, can’t recommend the app as long as this bug continues. I really do like the app. But given it’s “not exactly cheap” subscription price(s), as long as the bug exists, I’m not getting my moneys worth. Since it’s an news aggregation app, I know they can’t control the ads and links within the news sources. If they could, the app could be a 5 star rating. Stay with the free version (it’s still a decent source for news (though highly crippled from the subscription version(s)). If it worked as advertised, I’d bump it to 4 stars I suppose I’ll have to revert to the free version if this “notification bug” continues into my next subscription cycle; as I do like the app format. Or until I find something better that comes along.
Just got Ground a few weeks ago and started paying for the highest tier the same day. I was very glad to find an aggregate of important news composed of different sources from across the political spectrum, and was transparent on where it’s sources lied on the spectrum. That hasn’t changed with this update, but man does the app look gross now, and it makes things look more confusing. In the previous update it was simple: flat color background (it was black to me but that could just be because I have dark mode on for my phone) with red for conservative, gray for center, and blue for liberal sources. Clean and easy to see. Now it’s a weird light colored gray for the background and a beige highlight. The color for the biases are the same, but now they feel the need to add a gradient to the colors so it just looks like a giant gray bar with some red mixed on the right and some blue mixed on the left. I get that the point is to show an intensity in bias, like the more solid the color the stronger the bias is. However it looks ugly, and I much prefer the old view to the new one. I appreciate what they were going for, but wish they had kept it simple. Please fix, or at least give us the option to switch back to the old color pallet if we want to.
Best news app for people who think for themselves!
I don’t write many reviews but when an app is good enough to put an end to years of searching, the developers deserve the praise. I have tried many news apps and been dissatisfied with them all until Ground News. Not only does it do an excellent job of aggregating the news, but it provides a very intuitive and clean way to compare multiple sources. I also love the ad-free reader. This app is perfect for users who don’t like being spoon fed news from only one angle. If you like to think for yourself and don’t want to fall prey to spin and manipulation, this is the perfect solution. The Blind Spot is a great addition that helps fulfill the apps mission and my search to educate myself on news events without falling prey to confirmation bias. I have chosen to pay for this app both because it is truly worth it and because I want to ensure the developers are encouraged to keep up the good work. I truly hope that many more find this app and that it can help many to be able to think for themselves and see through bias in these increasingly divisive times.
Firstly since I know these first lines will definitely be seen more, DOWNLOAD THIS APP!!! With all the tension throughout the world that has been linearly increasing at dramatic rates as of recent, I as well as many others understand just how difficult it is to find any trustworthy, truthful media sources out there and have spent so many hours of my life’s just trying to find news sources that would report without biases. Ground News, you have single handily solved this massive issue with biased media by providing your users with not only their right to gain factual knowledge, but also their right to choose for themselves, bravo👏🏼👏🏼. I really cannot applaud the whole team behind ‘Ground News’ enough, thank you for having morals and representing what journalism truly looks like! THIS SHOULD BE THE INDUSTRY STANDARD I would like to say you guys have helped restore some faith in humanity for me, but because of your app I now know WWIII is basically in full effect😂🤣(only laughing because i’m not sure this much else to do besides that at this point).
Just a new way to attempt pushing the left wing narrative more to the center.
I had high hopes this would be a fair site, but whenever I see most publications from the left being said as “highly factual” and most from the right being labeled low or mixed factuality I saw the picture. Also there is a bunch of left wing news articles reading as center bias. I see a “center bias” news article labeled as highly factual and then denies 2020 election interference. That is not “highly factual” as they cannot prove this as a fact, and also don’t take into account the fact the Russian collusion story was a hoax of FBI lying to a FISA court to spy on a presidential candidate, or FBI clear violation of 1A in collusion with social media to prevent a Trump presidency and even suppress a factual news article from a 100 year old newspaper. These happen to support actual factual interference in 2020 election and to deny these facts with labels of “highly factual” stories is a joke. Now after saying all that, if you completely disregard their bias and factuality ratings there is a useful way to use this service. It has a huge collection of articles from different sources that can be valuable to compare and easy to find, but you absolutely must disregard the actual fact that their factuality rating is completely nonsense.
Update Feb 2022: The app got a major overhaul. Cool features to analyze your social feeds to see what kind of bias you’re seeing and more importantly the comments seem to be gone at my first glance. Raising my review. I’ll use the app more for a while and maybe give it a final rating. The app is well designed and easy to use. Getting an overview of how the news headlines are rated doesn’t take long since it’s pretty intuitive. I’ve added this to my regular news routine and might move to a subscription plan if it continues that way. The comments in the app are almost entirely right wing and certainly an echo chamber. Honestly this makes me skeptical of the app itself if the user base is heavily skewed to one end of the political spectrum. I know you can turn off the comments but I wonder why they even exist. The slanted nature hurts the trustworthiness of the brand. UPDATE: The comments are a 1 sided conservative cesspool that add no value. The app’s basis seems sound, but until they disable comments I would not recommend it and will not subscribe. The fact they permit that makes me question their motive.
I’ve been using the app for a while now and I can say that the service this team provides is great. I worry about being trapped in my own information bubble on the internet, getting sources and articles curated to appeal to my interests and biases in how they are told. This app helps prevent me from getting stuck in such a bubble! The comparison ability is not a first among news services, however Ground News does it very well and I additionally appreciate the ability to see how much a side of the political spectrum reports on a story, which shows the level of importance an issue is to a side or if the story itself may be told in a twisted way. I eventually paid to get the Pro version of the app to support this service. The small team personally reached out to thank me and told me to contact them for any recommendations on how to improve the app. That level of involvement was extremely nice to see. I agree with some others that the comment section of the app isn’t really needed, I personally ignore it. I feel this app’s purpose doesn’t really mesh well with the commenting feature. Though Ground News makes this feature easy to ignore if you wish, yet accessible if you would like to contribute to it. Overall I really enjoy this service, haven’t had any problems with it software wise, and would recommend supporting the team if you enjoy it too by subscribing to one of the paid models, since they’re so cheap.
A common recommendation for enhancing media literacy is to read a diverse array of perspectives to avoid bias and misinformation. Traditionally this has been difficult because there’s been no centralized place to parse stories from different outlets, with the exception of RSS feeds, internet forums etc. But even in those cases it’s easy to select sources that conform to our biases and preconceived notions. Ground News makes it easy to not just read takes on a topic from multiple sources, it also provides a handy guide for the flavor of perspective you can expect whether that be left, right, or center. And if you disagree with their labels you’re free to submit what you think is a more appropriate selection. This has been a very useful app for wading through an ocean of information. This fact, combined with the responsiveness and customer service of the team makes me wholly comfortable recommending this app to my friends and family.
1 - The new format is too convoluted. It takes too many screens to get to the actual story and even more to get back out. Readers should be able to go directly back to the main headline feed and/or the source page after reading an individual article. 2 - headline feed needs a “return to top” option. Nobody wants to scroll back to the top from several pages down. 3 - on the headline feed, chopping off the top of photos is so unbelievably annoying. You may think it’s a clever disguise to maximize clicks, but it is a psychological irritant. As a retired human interface quality expert, i suggest you shrink the photo and display the whole photo to the left with the headline and the source list to the right. Allow readers to choose at the headline where they want to land on the political spectrum and let them go directly to the desired source. You can put the source spectrum at the bottom of each article so readers can jump to the next source when they are finished reading. 4 - you need a ‘return’ to headlines’ button at the top and bottom of each full article. I am a retired engineer. Therefore I feel justified in making these criticisms. I am also a woman who was forced to retire because of discrimination against women in my profession. It pains me that a woman developed news aggregation site (such a great idea) is so poorly designed that it actually drives readers away.
I used to try to read a balanced selection of news sources on both sides of the ideological spectrum, but it got harder and harder to weed out sources of frequent misinformation. Ground makes it significantly easier to see what different Americans are receiving in their information diet. It surfaces news items that I definitely would not have seen otherwise, and it even makes it pretty obvious when a news item is planted from propaganda sources. The other thing I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t encourage doom scrolling. Each article has a quick summary at the top, and once you’ve looked at the major stories and their summaries, you’re pretty much fully informed about today’s news. Oh, there’s also no social aspect to the product. There aren’t any comments or any way to debate the stories. Folks can’t weigh in on the news. It’s pure news, not an editorial system pretending to be news.
Fantastic concept, as soon as I heard this existed I immediately downloaded and subscribed. People make more sense when you see the bubble they’re living in. The only way to change your worldview is to burst your own bubble. It’s not fun, not easy, but it’s necessary, and I’ll sign up to have my bubble burst any day. Unfortunately, and I hope I’m wrong, but my faith in humanity is such that I don’t actually think people will be willing to sign up to have their bubble burst. People want to take comfort in having what they already believe reaffirmed. It feels too good to be right and it’s too easy to think you’re right. Letting people live in their bubble, and inflating their bubble, that’s where the money’s at. Social media giants (or their AI algorithms) understand that. I wish ground news the best of luck and I’ll try to get as many people as I can to subscribe.
Great News App! If you want to stay informed on current affairs, you could download every single news outlet's app. But that would be a lot of work. Instead, make it easier on yourself and download Ground News Pro. Ground New Pro collects articles from a large pool of sources, and incorporates different types of reporting, so not everything comes from the New York Times or a local news station. It tells you if the source leans left, right, or center. It learns from your reading style and directs more articles from your choices to you. Great news from all over. International to domestic. If you really only want updates from your regional newspaper, go ahead and download that dedicated app. But for news stories from around the world and across topics including entertainment, science, tech, politics, and beyond, get Ground News Pro. You won’t be disappointed.
iPhone annual subscription experience: The rapid inclusion and selection of sources is really good, but— much of the time you will meet a paywall instead of an article, especially with many of the major sources. In hindsight it’s to be expected, but nonetheless without subscriptions to NYT, WP, WSJ and many others you’re left with a very different landscape including too many niche and sloppy sources. If you have subscriptions to the major news gatherers, why also this app?- If to deep dive into one subject at a time, or for news junkies to uncover yet more, okay. This is what I originally wrote: And way too many of the “free” sources are over the top with parallax and pop-up ads and the reading experience is an awful mess. Ground responded to my review, pointing out two very helpful features, which is why I added more stars: “We recently created an external browser that gives our readers a better news reading experience. To use this feature, click on the golden icon in the top right corner of an article. It makes for a less choppy news reading experience for articles that are inundated with unfortunate pop ups. Additionally, as a Ground News subscriber, whenever you open the newsroom to see the full range of sources reporting on a story, you can select “Sort & Filter” and remove paywall sources from that collection of stories. I hope this improves your experience.”
This app is amazing. Being able to scroll through the bias, location, and timing of a news story adds an incredible amount of context. The sources are truly international, and inline translation works well. I am now significantly more informed about how the world is seeing events unfold. This is something that google news, apple news, or any of the other aggregators do not give. Furthermore, the developer support is REAL, and it is handled quickly and correctly by one of the co-founders. I had an edge case issue where my second device created a dummy account and I used a different email for my subscriptions. The developer wrote back the same day multiple times and we were able to resolve the issue. Bam! I am a huge fan. Well worth the year subscription. Give the free trial a go, and you’ll be hooked.
The world DOES need this... From an app that isn't broken.
I'm gonna make this short and sweet. You guys have 10 people on the team and it looks like 9 of you need to give most of your wages to the poor guy or girl that wrote this application on his their own. I get what you're trying to do and I support it completely. However, as an engineer I cannot support this app because, well, basically, it's broken. I wasn't even able to finish my initial testing because I couldn't get passed the very odd window sizing and resizing, and eventually it locked up my system and I now I can gladly say I can recreate the problem quite easily. That's a serious bug, I would go so far as to say that your app probably needs an overhaul from an experienced programmer. If you're interested in some free (for a time) consulting, send me an email. With that saidl.. NEWS ALERT - Your program isn't ready. Fix it and give people what you really want, not this less-than-acceptable excuse for software.
Delivers Cool Bias Coverage, But Doesn’t Actually Deliver News
The stories pushed by Grounded have all the bells and whistles it promises, including headlines from across the political spectrum and references to outlet’s expected factuality. However, the app follows the same exact feed of stories that populate cable news, which is to say, most of the content I am show is not news but infotaiment. “Woman sees toddler walking on the highway” is not news, it’s entertainment for the morbidly curious. It affects no one’s life and is merely an oddity to grab attention. Actual news is useful information that describes events that effect the country/city/community/me. How are my tax dollars being spent right now? What is the state of the jobs market? What cities in the country are changing, and how? I’d settle for fluctuations of the price of corn and wheat! Just give me something with meaning, something that helps me look at society with a little more clarity. I want NEWS, not reality television.
I like Ground News a lot, because as a news aggregator it is effective at what it does and the free access isn’t super restrictive. It allows you to do exactly what a news aggregator is supposed to do, allow you to compare, and contrast reporting and track news stories. On top of that it lets user to tailor it to the topics and regions you are most interested in. What I think would make it better is if they did away with the comments section. Taking one look at the toxicity of most comments there, it is distracting and detracts from the positive experience to be had on the app. I know they allow you to turn comments off, but I still strongly think they ought to be removed. The focus should be solely on the news and not people’s two-cents. That’s what social media is for and not a news aggregator.
I recently heard about Ground News and was blown away when I checked it out. To my knowledge there is no other news site like it. It is incredibly impressive. Being able to customize my news feed for the news topics I care about and then to get notifications when articles from any of over 50,000 news sources from around the world publish articles on those topics - and to be able to check the bias and factuality of those particular journalistic sources at a glance, just wow. Well worth the small price for a premium subscription for anyone who wants to stay informed and who also wants to know the integrity of the news sources they read. Kudos to everyone on the Ground News team and to the software engineers who make it happen!
False balance is not “fairness”. This app is causing harm.
Ground News publishes fake news on a daily basis, labeled as a “left-wing blind spots”. The headlines and summaries on these stories are AI-generated based on the articles being collated, so they are only as good as the source material, which is often bad. Notably, I have seen and reported several stories about the LGBTQ+ community, that Ground picked from sources that it labels “Low” or “Mixed” factuality. These are tagged as “blind spots” for the left, rather than the outright lies that they are. Queer people are already under attack, and amplifying fake news about us is not helping at all. I’ve been cataloging the “blind spots” that Ground publishes. In the past week, I’ve captured approximately 100 stories from the left and 100 from the right. Stories that are labeled as “left blind spots” (stories where the coverage skews strongly to the right) tend to have significantly worse sourcing than stories labeled “right blind spots”, per Ground’s own factuality labeling. Right-leaning stories this week have had an average of 3.7 high-factuality sources, 8.7 mixed-factuality, and 3.6 low-factuality. Left-leaning stories had an average of 12 high-fact sources, 4.9 mixed-fact, and 0.3 low-fact. This leads me to believe that Ground is promoting “false balance”, giving equal weight to both sides of issues that actually don’t have two sides. In other words, they are promoting fake news.
Ground news is a great app and the subscription is well worth it - a modest annual fee for access to personalized recommendations, information about biases and factuality, and the ability to easily navigate between multiple similar articles to compare and contrast the information you see. In this age of social media being most peoples’ news source (myself included, until I downloaded this app) it’s hard to take anything at face value - there’s so many ways information can be left out or even simple word choices can affect how you respond to a headline. Ground news does a great job of giving you the information to consider articles critically and feel confident in the information you’re consuming.
I find the rating system for ‘left, center or right’ off the mark. The app attempts to categorize the slant of news based on the outlet displaying the story instead of its written content, context or original source. Here’s a hypothetical example: A news event is published by network ‘A’ the app categorizes as ‘left’, which creates a left percentage. Then, the identical story is picked up by three local networks which creates an even larger center percentage despite these local affiliates all sourcing the story from network ‘A’. Literally, it’s an identical copy a paste from network ‘A’s news feed. Based on how this app works that story is rated 75% center, 25% left. The factual content didn’t change, nor its context. So, if you are seeking contextually centered content be sure you read the story source header instead of relying on the apps rating of the host site. When you do this you’ll find the majority of all news found here is copy and paste from CNN or the AP.
We live in a time where information is so easily accessible and events are reported on by so many different sources. However we lack transparency of sources and this app/team seeks to correct this. They seek to show you an event has occurred which is what we actually need to know. They then show you the spread of reports about it while being transparent about the known political leanings of those reporting the event. They also make an effort to show you events that you may not have paid attention to due to your own political leanings. I believe this team has created a wonderful app that establishes a balanced news platform. One in which you can be informed of what’s happening around with transparency of political influence on different sources.
I’ve loved Ground News for a long time now, and have really appreciated the work that they’ve put into showing all sides and biases. Unfortunately, this seems to have attracted a community of toxic hyper partisanship where users just see their side as “telling it as it is”, the center as “watering down the truth”, and the opposite side as the “MSM lies”. The comment section has gotten so out of control that I had to turn it off. Even then, I can’t feel good about funding a forum where people get “thumbs’d up” for insulting and making conspiracy theories about the capitol police officers who committed suicide (my last straw). These are the same people who’ve driven any semblance of moderacy away from the community and drag Ground News down like an anchor. Again, I really do appreciate what the creators of the app have put together, but I just don’t want to fund the toxic environment that it hosts.
My initial review of this was based on the idea that even though this app fulfils a need and dream I’ve had for awhile, it had some bugs and inconsistencies. But since my first review I’ve seen updates that have addressed most of the issues. This is indeed a good team of devs that are actively listening to their community. Normally I don’t bother looking at all the sources for every piece of news because it’s too time consuming. I just try to get a general idea without taking on too much bias, but despite my best efforts I’m sure I’ll take on the point of view of the first few articles which are being fed to me via some personalised algorithm. This app fixes that, not only can I get a clearer idea of the biases, I can also compare each side or location and get even more information.
I don’t usually write reviews for apps, but I absolutely love this app! As a high school social studies teacher who teaches Government, American History, and Media Literacy, this app helps me better stay informed about the main news stories of the day. I love the bias feature that allows average news consumer to figure how how a particular story is being covered by the polarized media outlets. It even links right to the actual news stories within the app, so you don’t have to switch/close out an app to read a story. Seriously, for the average news consumer, the paid subscription of $9.99/year is well worth the money. I’m hoping to show this app to my students to help them understand the importance of getting your news from more than one source!
Love this news app! The layout is great, the ranking on left/right/center views is great, love the colors (very easy on the eyes). There is a slight annoyance with the alerts tho. I’m order to clear the app badge icon, I need to go into my alerts, close out and go back in for the second time before the alerts clear. I’m one of those who doesn’t like having badge numbers just sitting around, so it’s nice to clear them when I read them. Other than that, I’ll happily pay a small subscription for this beauty. Can’t freaking stand ads that are literally everywhere on all the other news apps out there. Even the ones you pay for still have just as many ads. So stupid.
This app does one thing very well, it takes basically every source and, using third party media bias charts (3 of them which can be found into he settings), separates the sources into 1 of 7 categories, from far left to far right. The media bias charts have their own unbiased methodology, so if someone does not like where their preferred news source is located, it’s probably time to start using another source. Do not be an idiot and complain that “FoX nEwS iS nOt RiGhT.” Of course Fox News is a right source, how partisan does one have to be to not realize that. The media bias charts are great and have really shown me that some of the sources I would dip into, I no longer want to use (ex: MSNBC). The app needs some UI improvements taken from an app like Brief (another great unbiased app), but other than that the idea of Ground News is fantastic.
Love Ground News but the redesign broke everything!
I love Ground News - it’s my go-to source for news every day. It’s the only place I trust to see media bias and get the full picture on each headline. But the redesign completely broke the “Read Full Article” feature! For some reason, every single source for every headline only actually points to one source. For example, every single source redirects to “Raw Story” for an article about Trump and classified records today. When I click CNN? Raw Story. Washington Examiner? Raw Story. It’s the same for every headline! Not all of them point to Raw Story - for each headline it’s a different one, but I can’t actually open the full articles except one. Also, minor bug, but it takes several views of the notifications page (accessed by the bell button in the upper left hand corner) to actually clear out notifications and mark them as read. I’m OCD about clearing my notifications badges so this has become super irritating. I’m not a HUGE fan of the aesthetics of the redesign either. I preferred the old design. That being said, I will get used to it if the bugs are fixed. Please fix this app!! I need my news back!! Ground News is such a fundamental part of how I engage with the news cycle and it’s been so frustrating to use since the update.
I love this app. In many ways we are still in the 19th century when it comes to the media industry even though the medium for consumption has changed. Having to listen to one persons opinion on something who pretends to be unbiased and works for a corporation which has a vested interest in outcomes social and political outcomes is utterly boring and exhausting. This app is fantastic and absolutely worth the monthly subscription price of only 83 cents a month. Thank you so much, this makes consuming world news enjoyable and interesting again. My only suggestion is to keep adding more news sources across the political spectrum to bring even greater variety of perspective. Any thoughts on this format in a nightly news program?
A news aggregator that rates bias is an interesting idea and I was really excited to see an assortment of stories and how the coverage differs. However, within 30’ of installing and only trying a few stories I am deleting the app due to absurd execution. Unlike other news aggregators that I’ve used, this loads each publisher’s individual Web pages. This is a problem because of constant pop ups, cookies, requests for subscriptions, ads, intrusive videos, and everything else we HATE about browsing the Internet. Why would I subject myself to so much crap just to see how different biases are expressed? Nope, I’m out. Clear out all that garbage and maybe I’ll reinstall. Stop using icons instead of names for news sources and maybe I’ll even pay. As it stands now, it’s an interesting idea, poorly executed, and not worth your $1/mo. or even your time.
Their built in browser has some kind of issue on iOS where the videos playing on some sites force themselves into full screen, repeatedly, making it impossible to view or interact with the article. This is is compounded by their browser allowing videos to autoplay and seemingly no setting available to disable that. If I could use this app without getting stuck in full screen videos (sometimes from the news outlet, sometimes an ad), they’d get my subscription dollars easily. I like how the news is collated and the information on bias and factuality (esp. since you can disagree with Ground’s bias rating and set your own, if I recall). I just don’t like being bombarded with autoplay videos.
Whatever made you swap the “left” and “right” colors so that the left shows up red and the right shows up blue, please either revert it back or pick new colors all together (not red and blue). It feels like one of those tests where they have a color word displayed in another color (I.e the word purple displayed in green). While I logically know the difference, it feels like an unnecessary complexity. NOTE: updating my rating from 3 stars to 5 for the quick response and solution. Sorry for being a typical American and assuming our purview is the world’s purview 😂 (to be fair though, it had previously shown as US for me, so I wasn’t aware of what caused it to change). Thank you!
Get all your news in one place on an eye-opening platform that shows you the bias, reliability and ownership of every source you read. Cut through the noise and escape media echo chambers with Ground News. Ground News is the largest news aggregator in the world with over 50K news sources and 60K articles added daily. But we aren’t a typical news aggregator, throwing hundreds of headlines at you that barely skim the surface. Ground frees people from algorithmic restraints, illuminates blindspots and makes media bias explicit with our one-of-a-kind media analysis features. AVOID MANIPULATIVE ALGORITHMS SPOT MEDIA BIAS DISCOVER BLINDSPOTS CHECK THE RELIABILITY OF SOURCES SEE WHO OWNS THE NEWS YOU CONSUME Read daily breaking stories from sources around the world, in real time. Like a modern day newspaper, we show you diverse stories instead of algorithm-driven content that can limit your worldview. News coverage is rarely unbiased, so we give you as much context as possible so you can come to your own conclusions. Compare coverage on partisan topics like politics, and elections. Enjoy our free features, or subscribe for in-depth analysis that will transform the way you look at news. About Your Ground News Subscription: Subscriptions renew monthly and can be managed through your App Store account Payment will be charged to your App Store Account on confirmation of purchase Renewal is automatic unless turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period Subscriptions can also be managed through Ground News by going to your Account Settings after purchase See full terms and conditions here: https://ground.news/terms-and-conditions
