Ground News
The unseen architectures of attention
Doomscrolling through Instagram the other day, I came across a post from Ground News that shocked me.
It highlighted that 84% of the world’s coral reefs are currently experiencing record bleaching — a staggering, existential crisis. But what caught my attention wasn’t just the story itself. It was the fact that Ground News flagged it as a ‘blindspot’ — something barely reported across certain parts of the political spectrum.
A climate catastrophe. Reduced not by facts, but by the selective focus of media. An existential reality quietly becoming optional, depending on who you listen to. It struck me how critical platforms like Ground News have become — not because they shout louder, but because they show, quietly and systematically, what we are not being shown.
Ground News: Instagram Post
Hearing about Ground News
I first clocked Ground News through Andrew Callaghan — the guy behind All Gas No Brakes, roaming the US with a mic and no filter. His chaotic, on-the-ground interviews blew up onYoutube, especially with Gen Z, because they felt real. No polish, no spin.
Callaghan’s popularity reflects something deeper: a new kind of media trust. In a landscape where traditional outlets are increasingly politicised or distrusted, figures like Callaghan — and platforms like Ground News — offer a sense of authenticity that cuts through, especially to Gen Z.
When he moved to Channel 5 live, Ground News came on as a sponsor — made sense. Both were about cutting through noise and showing what’s actually going on.
Credit: Andrew Callaghan, YouTube
What is Ground News, why is it so significant?
Co-founded by ex- NASA Ames Research Center – National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer Harleen K.
It’s built to show you what’s being left out — not tell you what to think.
Ground News Bias Bar – https://ground.news/bias-bar
The software aggregates over 50,000 sources across the political spectrum. It scores articles for bias, flags ownership structures (which companies fund stories or Media outlets), and crucially, highlights ‘blindspots’ — stories that receive uneven or missing coverage depending on audience bias, political lean, or editorial gatekeeping.
Importantly, Ground News does not tell its readers what to think. It offers something much rarer: a chance to see how coverage itself is constructed — and to question the assumptions baked into visibility. Its power is not in pushing an alternative narrative. It reveals the scaffolding behind all narratives- giving users the the tools to be sceptical not in the conspiratorial sense, but in the practical one.
A functional scepticism, rooted in attention, structure, and ownership. In a world where even existential realities like coral reef collapse can become politically invisible, platforms like remind us that attention is engineered. That what feels urgent — and what quietly disappears —is rarely accidental.
At Circus, we are deeply interested in the unseen architectures of attention: how structures of ownership, technology, and perception guide not just what we see, but how we interpret the world around us. Sometimes widening the lens isn’t about discovering new truths. It’s about realising how many truths were never missing — they were just moved out of frame.
Written by Aldo Maland
May 2025
