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I mean, of the possible sponsors out there, Ground News is pretty alright. I don’t particularly need another subscription, but it seems like a valuable enough service
It doesn't provide any real benefit other than letting you know whether a news site is "left" or "right" leaning. Which is a massive false dichotomy used to divide people.
I prefer objective truth myself.
Where is your source of objective truth?
snopes or something
I wait for it to become so important that it ends up in the meme and shitpost communities.
Back in the day my primary source of news was World of Warcraft. If it was important enough to matter it would show up in the game. If it wasn't any way inconsequential I never heard of it.
The original source. Be it scientific white papers, court filings, executive orders, the actual text of bills submitted in the house and senate. Etc, etc.
You just have to put in the effort.
To be fair, that does limit your ability to decide what is newsworthy to begin with. Ain't nobody got the time to read every primary source ever, and sometimes the news is literally just "sources say" until an actual court case or whatever drops.
Granted, if you already know what you want to stay updated on, then cutting out the middleman could be workable. You're just kinda limited in terms of what you'll ultimately be exposed to.
I just don't think the average American can (let alone would) read enough primary sources to keep "up to date" in the political sphere. Add science and tech, and that's just way too much to wade through. Even seasoned beat reporters miss stuff on their beat.
Oh, no doubt. The world is way to complex to stay on top of everything these days. No one person can do it all.
My point was that Ground News doesn't really provide anything that other news aggregate sites do -- other than "left" and "right" labels for the outlets. Which is a really shitty way to look at the world when you could just pull the original source for whatever you're interested in. Especially considering that it's a paid service. You shouldn't have to pay someone to spoon feed you which lens to use just to keep yourself informed.
I usually avoid speculation and unverifiable "sources" as well. Maybe if the source provided docs to backup their claim and the docs have been vetted. But when it's an entire article based on "trust me bro", I just can't do it.
I haven't used Ground News past the free trial, but a decent feature that I liked was simply that you could look into "a story" and get virtually all of the possible news reports about that one story. Just handy, tbh. If there are other free aggregators doing that sort of linking and grouping, I'd be interested.
The thing about "sources" I can understand, but I think they still have their place. For example, I really like Ars Technica as a tech and science source. One of the things that sold me on them was seeing them make predictions based on their "sources" and those predictions coming true (or close enough). When it comes to politics, the same thing applies. Have they established enough credibility to warrant me believing their "sources", at least provisionally?
But if you don't need or want to be on the cutting edge of political conspiring, then waiting for the court filing, full bill, etc. makes complete sense. I just often might need news, anyway, to understand the broader context of a primary source.
Personally I just check the AP every morning and watch PBS News Hour over dinner if it's on. But I will poke around on Hacker News and NewsNow if I'm bored, which does have an option to check multiple sources like you mentioned (it's the stacked orange squares thing next to every headline). Both are 100% free.
And +1 for Ars Technica, I see them writing about right to repair a lot. Which I'm a huge supporter of.
I'll have to check those out! Thanks for the rec.
I'm still waiting for the bill that states what happened in Nice last week. /j
This makes me feel like I'm being left out of an inside joke. I don't like it lol
The joke is that not everything (or almost nothing) that gets reported can be viewed from a lens of "objective truth". Your examples wouldn't be able to give me information of a statement that someone did, or if something happened... anywhere.
Those were just examples, I wasn't trying to limit the scope, hence the "etc. etc." bit at the end. My point was to verify for yourself. Statements and events can be verified in their own ways. Such as video footage or the minutes recorded during government hearings.
It's also very usable even without the subscription and doesn't have (its own) ads. Just use ad block if you want to actually read any of the articles.