June 24, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of Ditch the Suits, we're back with Matt Brassard, Head of Growth at Ground News, to continue the conversation about how your media diet could be making you more confused—and more stressed—than informed. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by doomsday headlines or wondered why every story you read feels slanted, this one's for you.
We break down how Ground News works, why headlines manipulate behavior, and how algorithms are designed to keep you in a digital echo chamber. Matt pulls back the curtain on the mechanics of modern news media, revealing how the platform’s bias ratings, blind spot feed, and factuality scoring can help you ditch the drama and get back to the truth.
Highlights:
- Why most people don’t actually read news articles—and what that means for your understanding of current events
- How Ground News helps you spot bias before it hijacks your thinking
- What the blind spot feed can reveal about the stories you’re not seeing
- Why trust in traditional fact-checkers is collapsing—and what Ground News is doing differently
- How just $30 a year could restore your peace of mind and help you make better-informed life and money decisions
No fluff. No politics. Just a candid discussion about how to become a smarter news consumer in a world built on outrage. Interested in Groundnews? Visit https://ground.news/ditchthesuits to get 40% off your subscription.
__________________________________
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About Your Host:
Travis Maus has been in financial services for over fifteen years. He is a Senior Wealth Manager and Chief Executive Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Travis also hosts the Unleashing Leadership Podcast, where he dissects some of his favorite books on leadership and how you can apply it to your business or life.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
Welcome to Ditch the Suitspodcast where we share insights nobody
in the financial servicesindustry wants you to know about.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
So buckle up and welcome toDitch the Suits.
(00:21):
All right, so we are back.
This is Ditch the Suits and inthis episode we continue our discussion
with Matt Broussard, head ofgrowth at Ground News.
And as we find out more abouthow Ground News works, we're going
to be digging into how toidentify bias in the news and the
importance of being aware of,I'm stealing their term blind spots.
(00:41):
We'll also discuss theimportance of the factuality scoring
system.
I think in the last episode wegot into a little bit about how the
on the street fact checkerswere kind of slipping in their bias
a little bit and we couldn'treally trust that.
So kind of how they've evolvedsince then.
So that'll be reallyinteresting to hear how that system
works.
(01:01):
And then if you just wanthonest information and you're looking
for a solution to like thatendless doomsday scrolling that we
all do on our phones wherewe're just like going news story
to news story, episode toepisode, you know, of podcasters
talking about the end of theworld, those types of things.
I think that this episode isfor you.
(01:23):
We're going to try to give yousome tools here that you can use.
As soon as this, you got tolisten to the rest of the episode
for sure.
But as soon as the episode'sover, you can and listen.
If, if you're a listener andyou're going to go out and subscribe
to Ground News, we'd love toknow that you heard it from us again.
We're not, they're not payingus for this, but I'm just interested
to know how much of ourlisteners we're actually helping.
(01:45):
So if we've opened you up andyou go out and you check out Ground
News and you find them as, asa, a source that you're going to
use going forward, slip itinto a comment or something, let
us know because that just, itfeels good to help people, you know,
get more out of their money in life.
And that's what digital suitsis all about.
I'm Travis Moss, the CEO ofSeed Planning Group.
Seed is a fee only wealthmanagement firm.
(02:06):
We deal with the news all daylong whether we want to or not.
We can't just be like, no, I'mnot into politics.
Listen, your life, yourfinances are impacted by political
policy and more so thanpolicy, a lot of times is just the
reactions to it.
That's all the market ups and downs.
You're seeing short termreactions to things a lot of times
that don't even come to fruition.
(02:27):
So how do we dig through that?
So that's that the lastepisode set this conversation up.
This episode is going to bringus home on it.
Do you want more of Ditch the Suits?
Well, let's take a break totell you about our Patreon channel.
If you're wanting moreannouncements, notifications, even
access to prior seasons, youcan head to patreon.com search ditch
(02:47):
the suits and subscribe to our channel.
You'll get notifications ofall episodes right in your inbox.
So visit patreon.com searchditch the suits or head to our show
Notes where we got links toour channel.
We're trying to share ourprofessional knowledge and our experience
of that.
Again, you get more out ofyour money in life.
So Matt, welcome back.
We got a lot to get through today.
(03:09):
It's going to be a little bitof, I think it'll be a little bit
of fun.
Yeah, thanks.
Happy to still be here.
All right, so first off,coming off the last episode, the
top thing in my head I'mthinking to me, and you said that
you spent a lot of time tryingto figure out how Americans are interacting
with the news or consuming the news.
(03:31):
How important is the headlineto American consumers?
Very, very, very important.
Just we see when posting onsocial media how little people click
through to the headline.
Usually on average, tweets canget like say 2000 views.
(03:53):
For us, usually around two tothree people actually click through
to the headline.
So thousands of people saw it.
Less than a handful click through.
So on click through you meanactually get into the meat of whatever
the.
Article was, even justclicking through to our page.
So we can't even guaranteethat they read anything, just like
(04:15):
actually clicking on the link.
And that's common in the news space.
It's like people very seldomlyactually click through, which is
what causes clickbait becausenews sites don't make money unless
you click on that link.
Ads, they can't sell subscriptions.
(04:35):
So just like, yeah, it'simmensely important to write a good
headline.
But the big, the big drivethat creates a headline is like will
a person click through to this?
So you have to balance properlanguage and proper information when
making that headline.
I can't tell you how manytimes I'll read a headline and actually
(04:58):
click through and then getdisgusted because the actual article
has nothing to do with theheadline said like bombshell report.
And then you find out that it,there's like no bombshell involved.
It's just, you know, somebodysaid something and it get, you know,
and it's kind of become itsown news story.
But it, there's in no way abombshell and then there's not even
(05:18):
a credible source or anythingto it.
I almost got to the pointwhere I'll read the headline and
I just go straight to the comments.
I'm like, I don't even want toun, I don't even want to know what
somebody's bias is sometimesbecause, because I can tell it from
the headline.
I going to jump straight tothe comments and just see how, you
know, to me that's entertaining.
Watching people beat the heckout of each other over stupidity.
You know, it's just like,everybody's just, I'm like, I just
(05:41):
want to see if it's a fair fight.
Is it 10 against 1?
Is it 10 against 10?
It's almost humorous, but thatheadline just seems so darn.
Is that, is that an Americanproblem or is that like a world problem?
It's pretty universal.
American, so at least we'renot that messed up.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's.
(06:03):
The American media sphere isbigger than any other one on Earth
by like a large volume.
But like anywhere where thereis an ad based or, or reader funded
publication, that's, that'sgoing to be an.
Okay.
All right, all right, solet's, let's get into ground news
then a little bit more.
(06:24):
One of the things I did wantto do is just set up a little bit
more background who created itand who owns it today.
Is it still a private companyand is that person still involved?
Yeah.
So the two founders actuallyare brother and sister.
Oh, wow.
Harleen Carr and Suk Seng.
Harleen has a background in engineering.
(06:46):
She was actually at NASA as an engineer.
She worked on the New Horizonsmission to Pluto.
Wow.
And then she left NASA.
I thought that it was verybureaucratic, which there it is.
And then went to the private industry.
She worked in space startupsin Europe and then was the youngest
(07:10):
and first female VP at RollsRoyce Jet Jet Engines.
So she worked for a while thatcompany and in that space.
Then her brother worked atBain as a consultant.
And then after a few yearsthey thought, okay, well like, you
know, let's team up.
Helene kind of had this reallycool insight that I like a lot where
(07:34):
when working in the spaceindustry she realized that like we
have this like, God, liketechnology where we can.
We can see from space if pipesare leaking.
At a farm in Poland, we hadthat level technology that we can
see this, but we can't agreeon, on, like body cam footage or
(07:56):
headlines.
So it's like tech can, like,solve these huge problems for us,
but also the new tech that wehave can create these problems, like
our fractured understanding ofthe news.
So that was kind of her.
Her poll where it was like,you know, like, even though tech
kind of put us in thesechains, they can also take us out
of them if done right.
(08:16):
So that was the approach thatled to ground news.
And they're still here aftereight years.
Shout out to them.
Amazing idea.
Okay, so ground news, the.
The main gist of it.
Tell us how it works.
Yeah, so kind of the.
The core feature of it isheadline comparison.
(08:38):
So you see any story, you cancompare sources from across the aisle,
across the world, they'recovering it.
So it gives you a much easierway to see kind of a fuller picture
of what's happening.
So you just go into the app,you can swipe, you can compare, like
cnn, Fox, Reuters, all acrossthe spectrum, across the world.
So that's kind of the coreheadline comparison feature.
(08:59):
But kind of our feature that'sgained a lot of popularity as of
late is, is called News Blindspot.
So it's the idea where if youread news on a newsfeed that's curated
by an algorithm like Twitter,Instagram, you probably aren't being
shown stories you won't, like,won't agree with.
(09:22):
Because you follow up oneperson on Twitter, your first day
you follow a liberalcommentator, the next post that's
been shown to you is going tobe also by probably liberal commentator.
And then you, very, veryquickly, to your knowledge or not,
you're enveloped in thisonline echo chamber of your own thoughts
and ideas.
So, and we think that thiskind of way of consuming news is
(09:45):
a core part of, like, why wefeel so divided these days.
Because we just, you know, thebillions of people on Earth now see
billions of differentrealities whenever, daily open their
phones to read the news.
So we attack this issue bycreating what's called a blind spot
feed.
(10:06):
So I use blind spot to define it.
It's a story that haspolitical undertones.
It's only being covered by oneside of the political spectrum.
So these news blind spots, weput them all on one feed.
And you can see that like, oh,like, okay, like, here's a story
about.
Example is there's a storyabout the temperature of the ocean
(10:29):
rise it's being mostly coveredby folks on the left.
This is a blind spot for the right.
You can see it on the feed.
And then the next story was,for example, a lot of sources on
the left undercoveredgovernment spending during the Biden
admin.
So you could see stories aboutthe Pentagon going over budget for
the 10th straight year there.
(10:50):
So it's a feed of these newsblind spots that aim to kind of bring
everyone back on the same pagebecause everyone on Earth sees the
same stories in the blind spot feed.
So it's a way that we can kindof like restore this shared sense
of reality that we used to have.
I remember in 2000, for aroundthe 2016 election, going to a conference
(11:13):
at Charles Schwab, theirannual kind of financial advisor
conference thing, and theyactually, they had a breakout session.
They showed us the statisticalanalysis of how the algorithm works
on a lot of social media.
So they would take Twitter andthey showed how the algorithm feeds
(11:35):
you more and more of whateveryou click on.
And what it does is it removesany moderation.
So the algorithm on Yahoo orApple or Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook,
once you start clicking onthings, it's thinking, I need to.
There's somebody paying tohave content on our platform or paying
(11:58):
ads on our platform.
We need to put more stuff infront of you that you want to see
so we can monetize your engagement.
We were.
It kind of like everybody'saware that they put stuff in your
food to make you more addictedto sugar and stuff like that, right?
It's the same thing.
They put it the way that theyprogram the algorithm, as if you
clicked on it once, okay?
If you clicked on it twice,you're going to get more.
(12:20):
If you click on it a bunch oftimes, that's all you're going to
get.
And it's going to pull youmore and more away from seeing anything
else.
And they actually showed thestatistics on it from a political
perspective, from a red and a blue.
And it was like there's anocean in between.
The fact that if it's notextreme in either direction, you
(12:40):
don't hear, period.
And you don't even hear themoderate stuff.
You don't even hear thestories about people getting together
in a room and saying, you know what?
For the common good, let's getover this and let's move on.
You know, you'll hear theextreme about it as oh, so and so
is a traitor or something like that.
But you don't hear aboutsolutions that they're trying to
solve.
(13:00):
So there's this like,tribalism that, that's creating.
But I wanted to start withwhat I would experience if I hit
your website.
So I go to the website and Iknow you have an app and everything,
but however I'm interacting,my experience when I first started
was on.
On the website.
So I go to the website and Isee a whole bunch of articles on
(13:23):
all different topics.
And then I see red, white andblue on each article and it's showing
left, right or center.
And the more, if I'minterpreting this correctly, the
more to the left it is, themore of blue you're going to see,
(13:45):
essentially.
And the more centric it is,meaning the more it's probably right
down the middle you're seeingmore white and then the same thing
on the, on the red side of it.
And so can you explain justthat experience?
I go to your web and this isthe free part, right?
I mean, this is the.
I don't actually have to havea subscription.
I can come here and.
(14:06):
And I kind of get a.
So anybody who wants to checkit out, you can go and you.
There's actually somefunctionality that you can see happening.
And what does that.
Left, right and center.
What's the rating descriptionactually mean?
So if I see something and it's33% blue, what's that mean?
Yeah, so the bias ratings,they're done on a source level.
(14:29):
So how it works is we haveratings from far left to far right.
Most of the sources you see inground news have this rating.
Okay, so example is like FoxNews is considered right.
So when you go to them, yousee the red label that says right.
C9 is considered left.
(14:50):
This definitely isn't news toyou or I or everyone, everyone here
who's ever listened to them.
But where this comes in handyis when you come across a news source
that you don't know either ifit's one where it's a news source
that's getting a lot of steamor it's a foreign source, or you
just aren't a big news readerand you don't know the biases of
(15:13):
sources other than like fiveor six big names.
So that's kind of theintention there, is it immediately
educates you where it's like,okay, like this, this source has
this bias.
Okay, I'll take that intoconsideration when I read their content.
And how this is done is it'snot done on our end.
Like, we aren't, we aren'tmedia bias analysts, but we do use
(15:38):
ratings from a few agenciesthat are Very good at this.
At called all Sites mediaviceFact Check and Advantage, they have
very detailed methodologies.
I won't bore your readers oryour listeners with, with how it
works, but the basic thing islike, okay, like if the source uses
a lot of loaded words todescribe certain actions, or if they
(16:01):
just don't cover certainstories, that kind of paints.
Paints their bias.
Yeah.
The more extreme they are in,in their dialogue that they're using
towards somebody, the morethat's probably going to put them
into one direction or the other.
Yeah, yeah.
And then they consider likehundreds of articles.
(16:21):
It's not just like off of afew, it's usually off of like a depth
of the content.
Yep.
And, and then how it works isthe bias bar, which we see on all
stories that shows acollection of the biases of the sources
that are covered in story.
So why that's important is itshows like, what side is covering
the story more because thatcan often give you clues where it's
like, okay, like if the storyis just been covered by sources on
(16:43):
the right, it means becausethe story may politically be to people
who lean.
Right.
So it kind of gives you, givesyou a hint where, like, what's the
coverage bias of this?
Who's seen this and who's notseeing this?
So that's the, that's theintention behind the bias bar.
So if I wanted to, if I wantedto use that tool as something to
(17:11):
maybe guide me in what Ishould be reading does something
that's got more of a score inthe center area, does that mean that
it's more moderate and hasless bias?
So should I be looking forarticles that inherently have less
(17:31):
bias or should I still belooking at the article?
So if I, let's say that I leanfar to the left, should I read the
far to the right article?
Like, is that what you mean bya blind spot?
Yeah, I think that bias bar,it should be instructive, but it
(17:51):
shouldn't ever really be.
Like, don't read.
This example is like with thiswhole tariff thing, it's been this
huge, huge story and there'sbeen lots of facets of like, the
effects of that that haven'tbeen reported that well.
So one example was there was ablind spot for the left.
(18:13):
So not a lot of sources on theleft covered this, but there was
pretty strong private hiringdata for private employers in March.
So despite all the chaos,hiring was still pretty strong, but
that was covered just bysources on the right because it kind
of made Trump's plan forTariffs look a bit better.
So even though it leaned.
(18:33):
Leaned, all right, it was, itshould still be important for you
to read.
But you know, looking at theother side, there was this story
that came out recently whereis US consumer confidence plunged
its most ever in the entirehistory of recording the consumer
confidence.
And that was unreported by the right.
So it's like, even though thecoverage of both these stories are
(18:55):
biased and that is key to oneside, both of the stories are still
important to read.
It kind of gives you a fullerspectrum of the knock on effects
of these tariffs.
So that's kind of how I viewthe instructive qualities of the
bias bar.
So it's kind of like pickingand choosing the conversations that
you're having and saying, youknow, that part over there is uncomfortable
(19:16):
for me, so I don't even wantto talk about it.
But now you don't knowactually what's happening over on
that side of the room.
And so you kind of like yourglass is always half empty because
you only know, you know ifyou're only reading.
And I guess that's one of theways that you could check yourself
if you're trying to figureout, you know, I'm really stressed
out about everything or I haveno problems at all.
(19:38):
I don't understand whyeverybody else is stressed out is
read the other side, you know,read the things that they're talking
about.
And it might, if anything,give you a little empathy because
you may still not agree with it.
You might still say, wellthat's your problem.
But you still might say, butat least I understand why they're
getting really worked up andreally upset about this.
And maybe we can tone it downa little bit because at the end of
(20:00):
the day, what happens afterpolitics is it's all regular people
getting smashed around, youknow what I mean?
And, and, and having theirlives up, you know, lives upheavaled
and all that kind of stuffthat's happening because other people
are fighting.
You know, I always saypolitics is like smart people doing
really dumb things to getattention, you know, and that's,
(20:21):
that's.
If you took social media outof it, I'm not certain we'd have
nearly the hyper politicalenvironment that we have.
It's.
But you can get instantgratification from being the person
who does something so radicalthat you get a million likes.
In fact, you can make moneyoff of being just a goofball.
And it's a really bizarre kindof world that we've ended up in.
(20:43):
So I can get that just bygoing to the website, which is awesome.
So for anybody who's thinkingabout what's it like, you go to that
website, you're gonna getinstant value, in my opinion.
So then there's some otherfeatures, though.
What's the next level up from that?
(21:04):
Yeah, so the basic, like, newscomparison feature to compare headlines
is free.
Um, but then there's otherstuff that we also have on plan.
So there's.
There's a free plan andthere's Pro Premium Advantage.
Um, I'll get into the exactdetails of that.
Like, roughly, if yousubscribe to Premium, you get stuff
you get more access to throughthe Blind spot feed.
(21:26):
On the free version, you'llonly get like three or four articles,
I believe, a day.
Um, but.
But for the premium version,you, you, you unlock a lot more.
Sorry, what's the blind spot feed?
Because that sounds interesting.
So on a regular, if you justgo to the site and you kind of make
(21:47):
a profile or everything GroundNews has got, I'm going to get some
kind of algorithm that's goingto feed me three blind spots a day
or whatever you just said.
But if I hit a subscriptionlevel, I can get a better understanding
of the full scope of my blind spots.
Yeah, because on average, wefind about 40 to 60 blind spots a
(22:11):
day, and we put that on ourBlind spot feed, and you can scroll
through them pretty quickly,but we only show about, I think,
four or five blind spotsthrough the freezer.
So if you want to see moreblind spots on the feed, you have
to subscribe.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's kind of a big dealthen, is to.
(22:33):
Is to get that kind of kind of information.
It just seems like if you're,I think the more hypersensitive to
the stuff that you are, themore that you're going to need to
consume more information andunderstand more blind spots to kind
of talk you off that ledge, tokind of calm you back down.
I think as extreme aseverything sounds, you know, from
(22:55):
climate change to, you know,Trump to the Democrat Party, I mean,
pick your news story.
I think, like, there's a shredof truth in every story, but most
things are much more in the middle.
You know, like, like whencommon sense actually prevails, it's
like, okay, you know, wereally ought to be here, but for
some reason, everybody's wayout to the left or way out to the
(23:18):
right on this.
And the more, if you, if youwere aware more of your blind spots,
you'd, I think, be able tofigure out, because I Think we people
normally want to be agreeable.
I think people are.
You know, there's some peopleout there that are antagonists, but
most people don't want tospend the energy fighting all the
time with everybody.
And so it's like, how do wefind that middle ground?
(23:40):
Well, you have to understandwhat you don't know.
So, okay, so I subscribed.
Is the Blind Spot feed.
Is that the first level subscription?
Yes.
So if you, if you subscribe tothe, the premium you get, you get,
you, you get more accessthrough the Blind Spot feed.
But you also, you also, butyou also unlock, unlock our factuality
(24:01):
ratings which show you thefactuality of every news source,
which for us is a strangefeature because like we, again, like,
we're, we're not fact checkers.
We don't want to be seen as afact checker.
I think again, fact checkingis really cool in theory, but just
with the way that trust hasnow, I don't think a trusted fact
(24:24):
checker will ever happenunless the way that we engage with
stuff online changes drastically.
But I'm not, I'm usually more.
You'd have to regulate thefact checkers.
So you can't.
We're at the.
And you brought it up great.
In the last episode, youtalked about how you originally wanted
people on the ground to justtell us what's happening.
And then it starts to slanttowards what the story they want
(24:45):
to tell more so than anything.
And in order to have factcheckers be what people think fact
checkers are, they'd have toactually be extremely regulated.
And there's no regulatory bodyfor that.
And frankly, the idea of factis very difficult because 99% of
things, you know, the what'sfloating around out there is all
(25:07):
opinion.
And so, you know, you can, youcan take our conversation and you
could, you know, probably ahundred times just in this episode,
say false, false, false,false, false.
But it depends on what nuanceof false.
Like if I say all peoplethat's false.
It's never all people.
There's some amount of people, right?
(25:29):
I mean, there's just on thenuance of how fact finding works.
So we want to be very carefulbecause there are people out there
that will let their bias drivetheir fact findings.
So you have a factuality scorethat's kind of got a lineage to this
other problem and trying tosolve this other problem.
(25:50):
How does it try to solve that problem?
Yeah, so we, what we do is werate factuality on more level of
the, of the publisher instead of.
Okay, so, so the idea isbecause again, it's like it'd be
nearly possible to fact checkevery article and even the methodology
of doing that would be grayand very, very pretty much, we think,
(26:13):
like impossible to pull off atscale, that is if it's trusted.
But what we thought was oursolution was more so to be, okay,
like, let's look at this new source.
And again, like, we use thirdparties for this that do this as
their main business, but themethodology is strong.
Where it's, they'll look atthe history of a publication and
(26:36):
they'll, it's like, okay, youknow, in the past they've done actions
that have harmed theircredibility as a news source.
So a common one is like, whenthey get a story wrong, a good news
source should publish acorrection and notice where it's
like, hey, we got a storybecause of X, Y and Z.
Here's this correction at this time.
So that's like basicprinciples of good journalism.
(26:58):
Some sources don't do that, orthey do, they kind of hide at the
bottom where it's like, hey,we got this wrong.
So that infraction kind ofdings the credibility of that source.
And over time, the worse thatpublication is in terms of their
factuality.
So what we do is we takeratings from these sources that evaluate
(27:22):
these alerts on theirfactuality and we'll rate it from
a very low to very high.
So we'll show you, like, okay,like they are, you know, a very low
level of trustworthy.
They're mixed or, you know, in between.
So the idea is that again, asa news consumer, we don't want to
tell you to like, hey, don'tread this because you know, our readers
(27:46):
are adults, they have criticalthinking skills.
Right, but we do want to.
Right?
We do want to, yeah.
But we do want to give contextbecause also it's like we don't expect
readers and users shouldn'tknow the in depth reporting history
of every article on earth.
So by this label, it makesthat choice a lot easier where it's
okay, I should pause whenreading this article and consider
(28:11):
their history of actualitywhen I process what happened.
And does that help with theproblem of unnamed sources?
Because I know that this is abig trend and this is a big push
with the media that I watch.
And again, I'm a broadconsumer because frankly, I get tired
of one side or the otheralways just trying to make the other
side look bad.
So I kind of flip flop andlisten to both sides quite often.
(28:34):
But there's this whole issuewith Unnamed sources.
So, and so who, we don't haveto tell you from such and such place,
who has credentials we don'thave to tell you about said this
and therefore it's a fact.
And they actually use that tolaunch other news stories and other
investigations.
I did this thing one time.
I, I had a dog that had cancerand they recommended that we do chemotherapy
(28:57):
for the dog.
And the dog was like a 13 yearold dog.
And so I researched, maybe itwas 11 year old dog, I can't remember
how old.
I researched chemotherapy in dogs.
And the best I could do is Icould find two sources for all of
the research, one of which wasdone by Pfizer, who by the way made
(29:20):
the chemo or the radiation drug.
And they had done a study, avery small study of about 80 dogs.
And the conclusion is thatthey extended the life of the dog
literally by a couple of months.
So you're talking abouttorturing a dog for months to add
one or two months to the endof their lives on average.
That's an asinine idea.
(29:42):
But then all the otherresearch that you found online referenced
that paper as if it was end ofstory and a conclusive study.
And there was one other studywhere they tracked 12 dogs through
clinical treatments ofdifferent breeds and different ages
and made another conclusion on whether.
(30:04):
So it was like when youactually check the sources, it's
like those are not realcredible sources.
And it even gets worse whenyou have in today's news, you know,
I have a source that told methis and you say, well, who's the
source?
I can't tell you.
It's somebody important though.
And it's like you could justmake that up.
(30:25):
Nobody would know.
Yeah, yeah.
And that that has happened alot in media.
Like example was during COVIDif you remember that whole like hydrogen
cloxy chlorine thing.
Yeah, yeah, that thing.
There's a story that, Ibelieve it was a, an Elliot broke,
where like there was so muchpeople who were in this local hospital
(30:49):
because of like hydrocloxicchlorine poisoning that they couldn't
treat gunshot victims.
So that was a huge saying.
Media on left was like, oh,like, you know, this is what Trump's
doing, making all these peopledrink this, this, this horse paste
or.
Right.
So it turned out that thesource was completely fake.
Someone actually went to thechannel and was like, hey, is it
(31:12):
happening?
And they're like, no, not at all.
But because the one sourcecovered it without checking the sources,
other news outlets also coverthat story based off their reporting.
So it's like there's this minilike scandal based off a made up,
a made up crisis.
So like in that case, that wasa pretty bad miss for that paper.
So they got their credibility dinged.
(31:33):
Now they're like a lowerfactuality on ground news.
So it's like, okay, when theUNAM sources is like, it's hard because
occasionally those are fine.
And that is how you treatsources who are like very, very vulnerable.
But when it's busted, thatlike that source was bunk.
That is considered in ourratings by sources that evaluate
(31:55):
factuality.
So, so one of the things Ifound really interesting is because
we talked about the how peoplewhen, like, if you're Republican
and Republic, you know,Trump's, Trump and the Republican
Party have all, all ofCongress in the White House, you
tend to stop tuning in as much.
You know, like, you're like,okay, I like where things are going.
(32:16):
So I'm not going to checkevery day to see if destruction is
here versus on the left.
You're going to Trump's here,the Republicans are here, destruction's
imminent.
I gotta check on this every day.
And then when it flips theother way, it does, you know, you
do exactly the same thing, go,you know what, Biden's fine, I'm
gonna let him drive.
I'm not gonna pay as muchattention, you know, and the other
(32:37):
side's, you know, I gottacheck in every day because they're
ruining this, that and theother thing.
So you kind of get the samething with the factuality score from
a standpoint of if you are notpaying attention.
So if you just read onearticle and say, okay, that's enough,
I'm gonna check in next month.
You miss the retraction, youmiss it when they come back and they
say, yeah, we got in troublebecause we said some stuff that wasn't
(33:00):
true.
And we're gonna, we're gonnacorrect that now.
And that's why, that's whydefamation is, is, is such a, an
issue because once you causethat reputational damage, it gets
in somebody's head.
And how often are you in ahabit of watching the news enough
so that you can actuallycatch, we said this thing and it
wasn't true and we're notsupposed to say that.
(33:21):
So we're gonna offer anapology now and we're gonna retract
the story.
Story.
You almost never see that.
And I think it happens quiteoften actually, because you're just
moving on to the next story.
I already read that story.
I'm not Going to read itagain, you know, and.
And so it's one of thosethings where I think you.
If you're gonna dabble in thenews, it's really hard if you don't
actually have a source that'shelping you understand what you're
(33:42):
missing and, and what'salready being proven to, you know,
publish stories that, you knoware low in that factuality score.
Because otherwise you don'thave enough context, you don't have
enough body of knowledge ofthe material that's out there to
understand.
These guys get it wrong allthe time.
I just don't normally seetheir articles, you know.
(34:05):
Exactly.
Yeah, it's.
It's a good way to see if anyof source is trustworthy.
Is trustworthy, aside fromground news, is if you go on the
website and if you coulddefine their attraction page and
it's very easy, visible, great.
Oh, if they don't have one run.
Because every good news sourceshould have.
Should, should have that.
And so it's kind of like aquick way to look at when you're
(34:28):
looking at a new source.
I wish they had a conflict ofinterest page.
I wish you could actually goand see how many people have actually
made money in government for apolitical party that are now at that
news station.
Like, that would be pretty telling.
You'd be able to go there andyou don't even need them to say anything
else.
You'd be like, okay, Iunderstand exactly what's going on
here.
Okay, so we've got factuality score.
(34:49):
We've got blind spots.
That is that part of thepremium package.
You get all of that?
Yeah, yeah.
So you get all that.
You get more customer, you getmore customization with your newsfeed.
You can like filter out moresources and have more control.
But.
But the two main sources forthat are more access to blind spots
and actually rings.
Okay, so like I'm a.
(35:10):
I'm a.
You know, I feel like I'mtrying to sell this a little bit,
but the point that I think Ihave, for anybody listening this,
I don't want to insult you atall, but ground news is extremely
inexpensive.
Like I got on there and it was.
I think it's a hundred dollarsa year for the premium.
(35:31):
That's for actually theVantage plan.
So.
The Vantage plan.
So there's.
That's above premium.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so what's the premiumplan cost then?
Because I just skipped that.
I saw a hundred dollars amonth and I'm.
Or $100 a year.
It's a year, right?
Not a month, it's a year.
Yeah, So I saw $100 a year andI'm like, okay, that's a deal, because
(35:52):
I don't have to go and try tofigure all this stuff out myself
now.
But you have a premium plan.
That's the one we've beentalking about.
And what's that premium plan cost?
It is 30 a year.
30?
Yeah.
3 0.
Yeah.
30 a year.
Yeah, I thought I misheard.
It's 30.
Yeah.
So for less than three, what'sthat come out to?
Two and a half dollars a month?
(36:14):
Two hundred and thirty three a month.
So pretty, pretty affordableif you care about the news a lot.
Okay, so I mean that, listen,if, if for our listeners, if you're
stressed out about the newsand you're stressed about the politics
and your family's fighting allthe time and your neighbors are fighting
and you go to work and peopleare ticked off at each other and
(36:34):
you're trying to figure outall the different things that are
going on and if tariffs aregoing to cause you to not be able
to retire and all that kind ofstuff, I think you can get a pretty
good peace of mind for $30 a year.
I mean, I, I'm, I, listen,don't go and up the price after our
episode because I think thatthat's, I, I just, I'm a huge advocate
(36:57):
for anytime you can getinformation and somebody is helping
kind of aggregate it for youso you don't have to have 15 different
public subscriptions withother news sources.
You can get it there and youget the blind spot tool, which tells
you, you know what you're missing.
You get the left, right, center.
That's why I call it the left,right, center thing.
You know, you get tounderstand what the angle is and
(37:20):
then you get the, with thefactuality scoring, you can tell
if it's a credible news source.
I mean, it just, I don't know.
I, I'm, I'm so excited that weran across this and, and if we have,
you know, one person thatsigns up and they get help for kind
of dealing with this kind ofsuper hyper political media that's
(37:41):
freaking everybody out about,you know, the end of financial time,
the Great Depression that'scoming, or something like that.
I hope that this helps becauseI think that, you know, the first
thing that you get when youread it is you go, okay, all right,
that's a little bit extreme.
Look, it's all blue or it'sall red.
That's a little extreme.
You know, what I mean, like,let's see what the counter argument
(38:04):
is.
Yeah, it's a very cheap priceto pay for peace of mind, for sure.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for everythingthat you do.
Is there anything else thatyou want to throw out there or are
we good to go on this?
Yeah, nothing extra, I guess.
Just like.
Yeah.
(38:25):
If you like what you've heardand you want to check our news, we
have an app, the App Store,Just Ground News.
Our website is Ground news dot com.
If you're more of a person whoprefers to engage with news through
newsletters, we also havenewsletters as well.
So just look up Ground Newsnewsletters and then you can subscribe
to them there as well.
(38:45):
And certainly they can followyou on social media, too.
It's a great way to kind ofget a taste of the overall program.
So thank you very much, Matt.
It was great to talk to you today.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for checking out Ditchthe Suits.
Be sure to write a review ordrop a comment about this episode.
And if you want more likethis, head over to ditchthesuits.com
(39:06):
you can send us a message andget in touch.
Let us know how we can helpand be sure to share any topics you'd
be interested in having uscover on the show.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
Thanks for being our guest andchecking out Ditch the Soup.
Foreign.
Welcome to Ditch the Suitspodcast where we share insights nobody
in the financial servicesindustry wants you to know about.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
So buckle up and welcome toDitch the Suits.
(00:21):
All right, so we are back.
This is Ditch the Suits and inthis episode we continue our discussion
with Matt Broussard, head ofgrowth at Ground News.
And as we find out more abouthow Ground News works, we're going
to be digging into how toidentify bias in the news and the
importance of being aware of,I'm stealing their term blind spots.
(00:41):
We'll also discuss theimportance of the factuality scoring
system.
I think in the last episode wegot into a little bit about how the
on the street fact checkerswere kind of slipping in their bias
a little bit and we couldn'treally trust that.
So kind of how they've evolvedsince then.
So that'll be reallyinteresting to hear how that system
works.
(01:01):
And then if you just wanthonest information and you're looking
for a solution to like thatendless doomsday scrolling that we
all do on our phones wherewe're just like going news story
to news story, episode toepisode, you know, of podcasters
talking about the end of theworld, those types of things.
I think that this episode isfor you.
(01:23):
We're going to try to give yousome tools here that you can use.
As soon as this, you got tolisten to the rest of the episode
for sure.
But as soon as the episode'sover, you can and listen.
If, if you're a listener andyou're going to go out and subscribe
to Ground News, we'd love toknow that you heard it from us again.
We're not, they're not payingus for this, but I'm just interested
to know how much of ourlisteners we're actually helping.
(01:45):
So if we've opened you up andyou go out and you check out Ground
News and you find them as, asa, a source that you're going to
use going forward, slip itinto a comment or something, let
us know because that just, itfeels good to help people, you know,
get more out of their money in life.
And that's what digital suitsis all about.
I'm Travis Moss, the CEO ofSeed Planning Group.
Seed is a fee only wealthmanagement firm.
(02:06):
We deal with the news all daylong whether we want to or not.
We can't just be like, no, I'mnot into politics.
Listen, your life, yourfinances are impacted by political
policy and more so thanpolicy, a lot of times is just the
reactions to it.
That's all the market ups and downs.
You're seeing short termreactions to things a lot of times
that don't even come to fruition.
(02:27):
So how do we dig through that?
So that's that the lastepisode set this conversation up.
This episode is going to bringus home on it.
Do you want more of Ditch the Suits?
Well, let's take a break totell you about our Patreon channel.
If you're wanting moreannouncements, notifications, even
access to prior seasons, youcan head to patreon.com search ditch
(02:47):
the suits and subscribe to our channel.
You'll get notifications ofall episodes right in your inbox.
So visit patreon.com searchditch the suits or head to our show
Notes where we got links toour channel.
We're trying to share ourprofessional knowledge and our experience
of that.
Again, you get more out ofyour money in life.
So Matt, welcome back.
We got a lot to get through today.
(03:09):
It's going to be a little bitof, I think it'll be a little bit
of fun.
Yeah, thanks.
Happy to still be here.
All right, so first off,coming off the last episode, the
top thing in my head I'mthinking to me, and you said that
you spent a lot of time tryingto figure out how Americans are interacting
with the news or consuming the news.
(03:31):
How important is the headlineto American consumers?
Very, very, very important.
Just we see when posting onsocial media how little people click
through to the headline.
Usually on average, tweets canget like say 2000 views.
(03:53):
For us, usually around two tothree people actually click through
to the headline.
So thousands of people saw it.
Less than a handful click through.
So on click through you meanactually get into the meat of whatever
the.
Article was, even justclicking through to our page.
So we can't even guaranteethat they read anything, just like
(04:15):
actually clicking on the link.
And that's common in the news space.
It's like people very seldomlyactually click through, which is
what causes clickbait becausenews sites don't make money unless
you click on that link.
Ads, they can't sell subscriptions.
(04:35):
So just like, yeah, it'simmensely important to write a good
headline.
But the big, the big drivethat creates a headline is like will
a person click through to this?
So you have to balance properlanguage and proper information when
making that headline.
I can't tell you how manytimes I'll read a headline and actually
(04:58):
click through and then getdisgusted because the actual article
has nothing to do with theheadline said like bombshell report.
And then you find out that it,there's like no bombshell involved.
It's just, you know, somebodysaid something and it get, you know,
and it's kind of become itsown news story.
But it, there's in no way abombshell and then there's not even
(05:18):
a credible source or anythingto it.
I almost got to the pointwhere I'll read the headline and
I just go straight to the comments.
I'm like, I don't even want toun, I don't even want to know what
somebody's bias is sometimesbecause, because I can tell it from
the headline.
I going to jump straight tothe comments and just see how, you
know, to me that's entertaining.
Watching people beat the heckout of each other over stupidity.
You know, it's just like,everybody's just, I'm like, I just
(05:41):
want to see if it's a fair fight.
Is it 10 against 1?
Is it 10 against 10?
It's almost humorous, but thatheadline just seems so darn.
Is that, is that an Americanproblem or is that like a world problem?
It's pretty universal.
American, so at least we'renot that messed up.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's.
(06:03):
The American media sphere isbigger than any other one on Earth
by like a large volume.
But like anywhere where thereis an ad based or, or reader funded
publication, that's, that'sgoing to be an.
Okay.
All right, all right, solet's, let's get into ground news
then a little bit more.
(06:24):
One of the things I did wantto do is just set up a little bit
more background who created itand who owns it today.
Is it still a private companyand is that person still involved?
Yeah.
So the two founders actuallyare brother and sister.
Oh, wow.
Harleen Carr and Suk Seng.
Harleen has a background in engineering.
(06:46):
She was actually at NASA as an engineer.
She worked on the New Horizonsmission to Pluto.
Wow.
And then she left NASA.
I thought that it was verybureaucratic, which there it is.
And then went to the private industry.
She worked in space startupsin Europe and then was the youngest
(07:10):
and first female VP at RollsRoyce Jet Jet Engines.
So she worked for a while thatcompany and in that space.
Then her brother worked atBain as a consultant.
And then after a few yearsthey thought, okay, well like, you
know, let's team up.
Helene kind of had this reallycool insight that I like a lot where
(07:34):
when working in the spaceindustry she realized that like we
have this like, God, liketechnology where we can.
We can see from space if pipesare leaking.
At a farm in Poland, we hadthat level technology that we can
see this, but we can't agreeon, on, like body cam footage or
(07:56):
headlines.
So it's like tech can, like,solve these huge problems for us,
but also the new tech that wehave can create these problems, like
our fractured understanding ofthe news.
So that was kind of her.
Her poll where it was like,you know, like, even though tech
kind of put us in thesechains, they can also take us out
of them if done right.
(08:16):
So that was the approach thatled to ground news.
And they're still here aftereight years.
Shout out to them.
Amazing idea.
Okay, so ground news, the.
The main gist of it.
Tell us how it works.
Yeah, so kind of the.
The core feature of it isheadline comparison.
(08:38):
So you see any story, you cancompare sources from across the aisle,
across the world, they'recovering it.
So it gives you a much easierway to see kind of a fuller picture
of what's happening.
So you just go into the app,you can swipe, you can compare, like
cnn, Fox, Reuters, all acrossthe spectrum, across the world.
So that's kind of the coreheadline comparison feature.
(08:59):
But kind of our feature that'sgained a lot of popularity as of
late is, is called News Blindspot.
So it's the idea where if youread news on a newsfeed that's curated
by an algorithm like Twitter,Instagram, you probably aren't being
shown stories you won't, like,won't agree with.
(09:22):
Because you follow up oneperson on Twitter, your first day
you follow a liberalcommentator, the next post that's
been shown to you is going tobe also by probably liberal commentator.
And then you, very, veryquickly, to your knowledge or not,
you're enveloped in thisonline echo chamber of your own thoughts
and ideas.
So, and we think that thiskind of way of consuming news is
(09:45):
a core part of, like, why wefeel so divided these days.
Because we just, you know, thebillions of people on Earth now see
billions of differentrealities whenever, daily open their
phones to read the news.
So we attack this issue bycreating what's called a blind spot
feed.
(10:06):
So I use blind spot to define it.
It's a story that haspolitical undertones.
It's only being covered by oneside of the political spectrum.
So these news blind spots, weput them all on one feed.
And you can see that like, oh,like, okay, like, here's a story
about.
Example is there's a storyabout the temperature of the ocean
(10:29):
rise it's being mostly coveredby folks on the left.
This is a blind spot for the right.
You can see it on the feed.
And then the next story was,for example, a lot of sources on
the left undercoveredgovernment spending during the Biden
admin.
So you could see stories aboutthe Pentagon going over budget for
the 10th straight year there.
(10:50):
So it's a feed of these newsblind spots that aim to kind of bring
everyone back on the same pagebecause everyone on Earth sees the
same stories in the blind spot feed.
So it's a way that we can kindof like restore this shared sense
of reality that we used to have.
I remember in 2000, for aroundthe 2016 election, going to a conference
(11:13):
at Charles Schwab, theirannual kind of financial advisor
conference thing, and theyactually, they had a breakout session.
They showed us the statisticalanalysis of how the algorithm works
on a lot of social media.
So they would take Twitter andthey showed how the algorithm feeds
(11:35):
you more and more of whateveryou click on.
And what it does is it removesany moderation.
So the algorithm on Yahoo orApple or Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook,
once you start clicking onthings, it's thinking, I need to.
There's somebody paying tohave content on our platform or paying
(11:58):
ads on our platform.
We need to put more stuff infront of you that you want to see
so we can monetize your engagement.
We were.
It kind of like everybody'saware that they put stuff in your
food to make you more addictedto sugar and stuff like that, right?
It's the same thing.
They put it the way that theyprogram the algorithm, as if you
clicked on it once, okay?
If you clicked on it twice,you're going to get more.
(12:20):
If you click on it a bunch oftimes, that's all you're going to
get.
And it's going to pull youmore and more away from seeing anything
else.
And they actually showed thestatistics on it from a political
perspective, from a red and a blue.
And it was like there's anocean in between.
The fact that if it's notextreme in either direction, you
(12:40):
don't hear, period.
And you don't even hear themoderate stuff.
You don't even hear thestories about people getting together
in a room and saying, you know what?
For the common good, let's getover this and let's move on.
You know, you'll hear theextreme about it as oh, so and so
is a traitor or something like that.
But you don't hear aboutsolutions that they're trying to
solve.
(13:00):
So there's this like,tribalism that, that's creating.
But I wanted to start withwhat I would experience if I hit
your website.
So I go to the website and Iknow you have an app and everything,
but however I'm interacting,my experience when I first started
was on.
On the website.
So I go to the website and Isee a whole bunch of articles on
(13:23):
all different topics.
And then I see red, white andblue on each article and it's showing
left, right or center.
And the more, if I'minterpreting this correctly, the
more to the left it is, themore of blue you're going to see,
(13:45):
essentially.
And the more centric it is,meaning the more it's probably right
down the middle you're seeingmore white and then the same thing
on the, on the red side of it.
And so can you explain justthat experience?
I go to your web and this isthe free part, right?
I mean, this is the.
I don't actually have to havea subscription.
I can come here and.
(14:06):
And I kind of get a.
So anybody who wants to checkit out, you can go and you.
There's actually somefunctionality that you can see happening.
And what does that.
Left, right and center.
What's the rating descriptionactually mean?
So if I see something and it's33% blue, what's that mean?
Yeah, so the bias ratings,they're done on a source level.
(14:29):
So how it works is we haveratings from far left to far right.
Most of the sources you see inground news have this rating.
Okay, so example is like FoxNews is considered right.
So when you go to them, yousee the red label that says right.
C9 is considered left.
(14:50):
This definitely isn't news toyou or I or everyone, everyone here
who's ever listened to them.
But where this comes in handyis when you come across a news source
that you don't know either ifit's one where it's a news source
that's getting a lot of steamor it's a foreign source, or you
just aren't a big news readerand you don't know the biases of
(15:13):
sources other than like fiveor six big names.
So that's kind of theintention there, is it immediately
educates you where it's like,okay, like this, this source has
this bias.
Okay, I'll take that intoconsideration when I read their content.
And how this is done is it'snot done on our end.
Like, we aren't, we aren'tmedia bias analysts, but we do use
(15:38):
ratings from a few agenciesthat are Very good at this.
At called all Sites mediaviceFact Check and Advantage, they have
very detailed methodologies.
I won't bore your readers oryour listeners with, with how it
works, but the basic thing islike, okay, like if the source uses
a lot of loaded words todescribe certain actions, or if they
(16:01):
just don't cover certainstories, that kind of paints.
Paints their bias.
Yeah.
The more extreme they are in,in their dialogue that they're using
towards somebody, the morethat's probably going to put them
into one direction or the other.
Yeah, yeah.
And then they consider likehundreds of articles.
(16:21):
It's not just like off of afew, it's usually off of like a depth
of the content.
Yep.
And, and then how it works isthe bias bar, which we see on all
stories that shows acollection of the biases of the sources
that are covered in story.
So why that's important is itshows like, what side is covering
the story more because thatcan often give you clues where it's
like, okay, like if the storyis just been covered by sources on
(16:43):
the right, it means becausethe story may politically be to people
who lean.
Right.
So it kind of gives you, givesyou a hint where, like, what's the
coverage bias of this?
Who's seen this and who's notseeing this?
So that's the, that's theintention behind the bias bar.
So if I wanted to, if I wantedto use that tool as something to
(17:11):
maybe guide me in what Ishould be reading does something
that's got more of a score inthe center area, does that mean that
it's more moderate and hasless bias?
So should I be looking forarticles that inherently have less
(17:31):
bias or should I still belooking at the article?
So if I, let's say that I leanfar to the left, should I read the
far to the right article?
Like, is that what you mean bya blind spot?
Yeah, I think that bias bar,it should be instructive, but it
(17:51):
shouldn't ever really be.
Like, don't read.
This example is like with thiswhole tariff thing, it's been this
huge, huge story and there'sbeen lots of facets of like, the
effects of that that haven'tbeen reported that well.
So one example was there was ablind spot for the left.
(18:13):
So not a lot of sources on theleft covered this, but there was
pretty strong private hiringdata for private employers in March.
So despite all the chaos,hiring was still pretty strong, but
that was covered just bysources on the right because it kind
of made Trump's plan forTariffs look a bit better.
So even though it leaned.
(18:33):
Leaned, all right, it was, itshould still be important for you
to read.
But you know, looking at theother side, there was this story
that came out recently whereis US consumer confidence plunged
its most ever in the entirehistory of recording the consumer
confidence.
And that was unreported by the right.
So it's like, even though thecoverage of both these stories are
(18:55):
biased and that is key to oneside, both of the stories are still
important to read.
It kind of gives you a fullerspectrum of the knock on effects
of these tariffs.
So that's kind of how I viewthe instructive qualities of the
bias bar.
So it's kind of like pickingand choosing the conversations that
you're having and saying, youknow, that part over there is uncomfortable
(19:16):
for me, so I don't even wantto talk about it.
But now you don't knowactually what's happening over on
that side of the room.
And so you kind of like yourglass is always half empty because
you only know, you know ifyou're only reading.
And I guess that's one of theways that you could check yourself
if you're trying to figureout, you know, I'm really stressed
out about everything or I haveno problems at all.
(19:38):
I don't understand whyeverybody else is stressed out is
read the other side, you know,read the things that they're talking
about.
And it might, if anything,give you a little empathy because
you may still not agree with it.
You might still say, wellthat's your problem.
But you still might say, butat least I understand why they're
getting really worked up andreally upset about this.
And maybe we can tone it downa little bit because at the end of
(20:00):
the day, what happens afterpolitics is it's all regular people
getting smashed around, youknow what I mean?
And, and, and having theirlives up, you know, lives upheavaled
and all that kind of stuffthat's happening because other people
are fighting.
You know, I always saypolitics is like smart people doing
really dumb things to getattention, you know, and that's,
(20:21):
that's.
If you took social media outof it, I'm not certain we'd have
nearly the hyper politicalenvironment that we have.
It's.
But you can get instantgratification from being the person
who does something so radicalthat you get a million likes.
In fact, you can make moneyoff of being just a goofball.
And it's a really bizarre kindof world that we've ended up in.
(20:43):
So I can get that just bygoing to the website, which is awesome.
So for anybody who's thinkingabout what's it like, you go to that
website, you're gonna getinstant value, in my opinion.
So then there's some otherfeatures, though.
What's the next level up from that?
(21:04):
Yeah, so the basic, like, newscomparison feature to compare headlines
is free.
Um, but then there's otherstuff that we also have on plan.
So there's.
There's a free plan andthere's Pro Premium Advantage.
Um, I'll get into the exactdetails of that.
Like, roughly, if yousubscribe to Premium, you get stuff
you get more access to throughthe Blind spot feed.
(21:26):
On the free version, you'llonly get like three or four articles,
I believe, a day.
Um, but.
But for the premium version,you, you, you unlock a lot more.
Sorry, what's the blind spot feed?
Because that sounds interesting.
So on a regular, if you justgo to the site and you kind of make
(21:47):
a profile or everything GroundNews has got, I'm going to get some
kind of algorithm that's goingto feed me three blind spots a day
or whatever you just said.
But if I hit a subscriptionlevel, I can get a better understanding
of the full scope of my blind spots.
Yeah, because on average, wefind about 40 to 60 blind spots a
(22:11):
day, and we put that on ourBlind spot feed, and you can scroll
through them pretty quickly,but we only show about, I think,
four or five blind spotsthrough the freezer.
So if you want to see moreblind spots on the feed, you have
to subscribe.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's kind of a big dealthen, is to.
(22:33):
Is to get that kind of kind of information.
It just seems like if you're,I think the more hypersensitive to
the stuff that you are, themore that you're going to need to
consume more information andunderstand more blind spots to kind
of talk you off that ledge, tokind of calm you back down.
I think as extreme aseverything sounds, you know, from
(22:55):
climate change to, you know,Trump to the Democrat Party, I mean,
pick your news story.
I think, like, there's a shredof truth in every story, but most
things are much more in the middle.
You know, like, like whencommon sense actually prevails, it's
like, okay, you know, wereally ought to be here, but for
some reason, everybody's wayout to the left or way out to the
(23:18):
right on this.
And the more, if you, if youwere aware more of your blind spots,
you'd, I think, be able tofigure out, because I Think we people
normally want to be agreeable.
I think people are.
You know, there's some peopleout there that are antagonists, but
most people don't want tospend the energy fighting all the
time with everybody.
And so it's like, how do wefind that middle ground?
(23:40):
Well, you have to understandwhat you don't know.
So, okay, so I subscribed.
Is the Blind Spot feed.
Is that the first level subscription?
Yes.
So if you, if you subscribe tothe, the premium you get, you get,
you, you get more accessthrough the Blind Spot feed.
But you also, you also, butyou also unlock, unlock our factuality
(24:01):
ratings which show you thefactuality of every news source,
which for us is a strangefeature because like we, again, like,
we're, we're not fact checkers.
We don't want to be seen as afact checker.
I think again, fact checkingis really cool in theory, but just
with the way that trust hasnow, I don't think a trusted fact
(24:24):
checker will ever happenunless the way that we engage with
stuff online changes drastically.
But I'm not, I'm usually more.
You'd have to regulate thefact checkers.
So you can't.
We're at the.
And you brought it up great.
In the last episode, youtalked about how you originally wanted
people on the ground to justtell us what's happening.
And then it starts to slanttowards what the story they want
(24:45):
to tell more so than anything.
And in order to have factcheckers be what people think fact
checkers are, they'd have toactually be extremely regulated.
And there's no regulatory bodyfor that.
And frankly, the idea of factis very difficult because 99% of
things, you know, the what'sfloating around out there is all
(25:07):
opinion.
And so, you know, you can, youcan take our conversation and you
could, you know, probably ahundred times just in this episode,
say false, false, false,false, false.
But it depends on what nuanceof false.
Like if I say all peoplethat's false.
It's never all people.
There's some amount of people, right?
(25:29):
I mean, there's just on thenuance of how fact finding works.
So we want to be very carefulbecause there are people out there
that will let their bias drivetheir fact findings.
So you have a factuality scorethat's kind of got a lineage to this
other problem and trying tosolve this other problem.
(25:50):
How does it try to solve that problem?
Yeah, so we, what we do is werate factuality on more level of
the, of the publisher instead of.
Okay, so, so the idea isbecause again, it's like it'd be
nearly possible to fact checkevery article and even the methodology
of doing that would be grayand very, very pretty much, we think,
(26:13):
like impossible to pull off atscale, that is if it's trusted.
But what we thought was oursolution was more so to be, okay,
like, let's look at this new source.
And again, like, we use thirdparties for this that do this as
their main business, but themethodology is strong.
Where it's, they'll look atthe history of a publication and
(26:36):
they'll, it's like, okay, youknow, in the past they've done actions
that have harmed theircredibility as a news source.
So a common one is like, whenthey get a story wrong, a good news
source should publish acorrection and notice where it's
like, hey, we got a storybecause of X, Y and Z.
Here's this correction at this time.
So that's like basicprinciples of good journalism.
(26:58):
Some sources don't do that, orthey do, they kind of hide at the
bottom where it's like, hey,we got this wrong.
So that infraction kind ofdings the credibility of that source.
And over time, the worse thatpublication is in terms of their
factuality.
So what we do is we takeratings from these sources that evaluate
(27:22):
these alerts on theirfactuality and we'll rate it from
a very low to very high.
So we'll show you, like, okay,like they are, you know, a very low
level of trustworthy.
They're mixed or, you know, in between.
So the idea is that again, asa news consumer, we don't want to
tell you to like, hey, don'tread this because you know, our readers
(27:46):
are adults, they have criticalthinking skills.
Right, but we do want to.
Right?
We do want to, yeah.
But we do want to give contextbecause also it's like we don't expect
readers and users shouldn'tknow the in depth reporting history
of every article on earth.
So by this label, it makesthat choice a lot easier where it's
okay, I should pause whenreading this article and consider
(28:11):
their history of actualitywhen I process what happened.
And does that help with theproblem of unnamed sources?
Because I know that this is abig trend and this is a big push
with the media that I watch.
And again, I'm a broadconsumer because frankly, I get tired
of one side or the otheralways just trying to make the other
side look bad.
So I kind of flip flop andlisten to both sides quite often.
(28:34):
But there's this whole issuewith Unnamed sources.
So, and so who, we don't haveto tell you from such and such place,
who has credentials we don'thave to tell you about said this
and therefore it's a fact.
And they actually use that tolaunch other news stories and other
investigations.
I did this thing one time.
I, I had a dog that had cancerand they recommended that we do chemotherapy
(28:57):
for the dog.
And the dog was like a 13 yearold dog.
And so I researched, maybe itwas 11 year old dog, I can't remember
how old.
I researched chemotherapy in dogs.
And the best I could do is Icould find two sources for all of
the research, one of which wasdone by Pfizer, who by the way made
(29:20):
the chemo or the radiation drug.
And they had done a study, avery small study of about 80 dogs.
And the conclusion is thatthey extended the life of the dog
literally by a couple of months.
So you're talking abouttorturing a dog for months to add
one or two months to the endof their lives on average.
That's an asinine idea.
(29:42):
But then all the otherresearch that you found online referenced
that paper as if it was end ofstory and a conclusive study.
And there was one other studywhere they tracked 12 dogs through
clinical treatments ofdifferent breeds and different ages
and made another conclusion on whether.
(30:04):
So it was like when youactually check the sources, it's
like those are not realcredible sources.
And it even gets worse whenyou have in today's news, you know,
I have a source that told methis and you say, well, who's the
source?
I can't tell you.
It's somebody important though.
And it's like you could justmake that up.
(30:25):
Nobody would know.
Yeah, yeah.
And that that has happened alot in media.
Like example was during COVIDif you remember that whole like hydrogen
cloxy chlorine thing.
Yeah, yeah, that thing.
There's a story that, Ibelieve it was a, an Elliot broke,
where like there was so muchpeople who were in this local hospital
(30:49):
because of like hydrocloxicchlorine poisoning that they couldn't
treat gunshot victims.
So that was a huge saying.
Media on left was like, oh,like, you know, this is what Trump's
doing, making all these peopledrink this, this, this horse paste
or.
Right.
So it turned out that thesource was completely fake.
Someone actually went to thechannel and was like, hey, is it
(31:12):
happening?
And they're like, no, not at all.
But because the one sourcecovered it without checking the sources,
other news outlets also coverthat story based off their reporting.
So it's like there's this minilike scandal based off a made up,
a made up crisis.
So like in that case, that wasa pretty bad miss for that paper.
So they got their credibility dinged.
(31:33):
Now they're like a lowerfactuality on ground news.
So it's like, okay, when theUNAM sources is like, it's hard because
occasionally those are fine.
And that is how you treatsources who are like very, very vulnerable.
But when it's busted, thatlike that source was bunk.
That is considered in ourratings by sources that evaluate
(31:55):
factuality.
So, so one of the things Ifound really interesting is because
we talked about the how peoplewhen, like, if you're Republican
and Republic, you know,Trump's, Trump and the Republican
Party have all, all ofCongress in the White House, you
tend to stop tuning in as much.
You know, like, you're like,okay, I like where things are going.
(32:16):
So I'm not going to checkevery day to see if destruction is
here versus on the left.
You're going to Trump's here,the Republicans are here, destruction's
imminent.
I gotta check on this every day.
And then when it flips theother way, it does, you know, you
do exactly the same thing, go,you know what, Biden's fine, I'm
gonna let him drive.
I'm not gonna pay as muchattention, you know, and the other
(32:37):
side's, you know, I gottacheck in every day because they're
ruining this, that and theother thing.
So you kind of get the samething with the factuality score from
a standpoint of if you are notpaying attention.
So if you just read onearticle and say, okay, that's enough,
I'm gonna check in next month.
You miss the retraction, youmiss it when they come back and they
say, yeah, we got in troublebecause we said some stuff that wasn't
(33:00):
true.
And we're gonna, we're gonnacorrect that now.
And that's why, that's whydefamation is, is, is such a, an
issue because once you causethat reputational damage, it gets
in somebody's head.
And how often are you in ahabit of watching the news enough
so that you can actuallycatch, we said this thing and it
wasn't true and we're notsupposed to say that.
(33:21):
So we're gonna offer anapology now and we're gonna retract
the story.
Story.
You almost never see that.
And I think it happens quiteoften actually, because you're just
moving on to the next story.
I already read that story.
I'm not Going to read itagain, you know, and.
And so it's one of thosethings where I think you.
If you're gonna dabble in thenews, it's really hard if you don't
actually have a source that'shelping you understand what you're
(33:42):
missing and, and what'salready being proven to, you know,
publish stories that, you knoware low in that factuality score.
Because otherwise you don'thave enough context, you don't have
enough body of knowledge ofthe material that's out there to
understand.
These guys get it wrong allthe time.
I just don't normally seetheir articles, you know.
(34:05):
Exactly.
Yeah, it's.
It's a good way to see if anyof source is trustworthy.
Is trustworthy, aside fromground news, is if you go on the
website and if you coulddefine their attraction page and
it's very easy, visible, great.
Oh, if they don't have one run.
Because every good news sourceshould have.
Should, should have that.
And so it's kind of like aquick way to look at when you're
(34:28):
looking at a new source.
I wish they had a conflict ofinterest page.
I wish you could actually goand see how many people have actually
made money in government for apolitical party that are now at that
news station.
Like, that would be pretty telling.
You'd be able to go there andyou don't even need them to say anything
else.
You'd be like, okay, Iunderstand exactly what's going on
here.
Okay, so we've got factuality score.
(34:49):
We've got blind spots.
That is that part of thepremium package.
You get all of that?
Yeah, yeah.
So you get all that.
You get more customer, you getmore customization with your newsfeed.
You can like filter out moresources and have more control.
But.
But the two main sources forthat are more access to blind spots
and actually rings.
Okay, so like I'm a.
(35:10):
I'm a.
You know, I feel like I'mtrying to sell this a little bit,
but the point that I think Ihave, for anybody listening this,
I don't want to insult you atall, but ground news is extremely
inexpensive.
Like I got on there and it was.
I think it's a hundred dollarsa year for the premium.
(35:31):
That's for actually theVantage plan.
So.
The Vantage plan.
So there's.
That's above premium.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so what's the premiumplan cost then?
Because I just skipped that.
I saw a hundred dollars amonth and I'm.
Or $100 a year.
It's a year, right?
Not a month, it's a year.
Yeah, So I saw $100 a year andI'm like, okay, that's a deal, because
(35:52):
I don't have to go and try tofigure all this stuff out myself
now.
But you have a premium plan.
That's the one we've beentalking about.
And what's that premium plan cost?
It is 30 a year.
30?
Yeah.
3 0.
Yeah.
30 a year.
Yeah, I thought I misheard.
It's 30.
Yeah.
So for less than three, what'sthat come out to?
Two and a half dollars a month?
(36:14):
Two hundred and thirty three a month.
So pretty, pretty affordableif you care about the news a lot.
Okay, so I mean that, listen,if, if for our listeners, if you're
stressed out about the newsand you're stressed about the politics
and your family's fighting allthe time and your neighbors are fighting
and you go to work and peopleare ticked off at each other and
(36:34):
you're trying to figure outall the different things that are
going on and if tariffs aregoing to cause you to not be able
to retire and all that kind ofstuff, I think you can get a pretty
good peace of mind for $30 a year.
I mean, I, I'm, I, listen,don't go and up the price after our
episode because I think thatthat's, I, I just, I'm a huge advocate
(36:57):
for anytime you can getinformation and somebody is helping
kind of aggregate it for youso you don't have to have 15 different
public subscriptions withother news sources.
You can get it there and youget the blind spot tool, which tells
you, you know what you're missing.
You get the left, right, center.
That's why I call it the left,right, center thing.
You know, you get tounderstand what the angle is and
(37:20):
then you get the, with thefactuality scoring, you can tell
if it's a credible news source.
I mean, it just, I don't know.
I, I'm, I'm so excited that weran across this and, and if we have,
you know, one person thatsigns up and they get help for kind
of dealing with this kind ofsuper hyper political media that's
(37:41):
freaking everybody out about,you know, the end of financial time,
the Great Depression that'scoming, or something like that.
I hope that this helps becauseI think that, you know, the first
thing that you get when youread it is you go, okay, all right,
that's a little bit extreme.
Look, it's all blue or it'sall red.
That's a little extreme.
You know, what I mean, like,let's see what the counter argument
(38:04):
is.
Yeah, it's a very cheap priceto pay for peace of mind, for sure.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for everythingthat you do.
Is there anything else thatyou want to throw out there or are
we good to go on this?
Yeah, nothing extra, I guess.
Just like.
Yeah.
(38:25):
If you like what you've heardand you want to check our news, we
have an app, the App Store,Just Ground News.
Our website is Ground news dot com.
If you're more of a person whoprefers to engage with news through
newsletters, we also havenewsletters as well.
So just look up Ground Newsnewsletters and then you can subscribe
to them there as well.
(38:45):
And certainly they can followyou on social media, too.
It's a great way to kind ofget a taste of the overall program.
So thank you very much, Matt.
It was great to talk to you today.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for checking out Ditchthe Suits.
Be sure to write a review ordrop a comment about this episode.
And if you want more likethis, head over to ditchthesuits.com
(39:06):
you can send us a message andget in touch.
Let us know how we can helpand be sure to share any topics you'd
be interested in having uscover on the show.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
Thanks for being our guest andchecking out Ditch the Soup.
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