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As regular readers of the Punching Up newsletter know, I start my news consumption each day on Ground News. While running for U.S. House in 2024, I remarked in an interview that we needed some kind of organization to grade news sources on bias and truthfulness. That’s exactly what Ground News does, and I use it every day. Ground News brings biases and factuality out into the light. It also helps me peer into my information blind spots and understand what kind of information the people with whom I am not politically aligned are being fed Punching Up readers can get 40% off the Ground News unlimited-access Vantage plan (what I have) using my link, groundnews.com/punch [ [link removed] ] or by clicking the button below.
Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have to be trained, but it seems that Elon Musk’s X.com has the most incorrigible of the AI puppies. Ask it to fetch your slippers, and it comes back with a swastika. Expect it to point out a game bird, and it retrieves child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Kristi Noem, I assume, would have shot it by now. Except, all things including the Epstein files considered, there may be some in her circles for whom those things are features, not bugs.
The other night, I was watching reality-TV with my wife—you make certain sacrifices in a relationship—and one segment featured sheriff’s deputies executing a search warrant at the home of an elderly couple and their 30-something son. It seemed that someone in the house had been trading CSAM online. A task-force investigator talked to the three of them in the driveway. As soon as he said, “Child porn,” the son’s face contorted and he slowly slid behind his mother.
The son was later arrested for production, possession, and distribution of AI child pornography, some of which looked “very realistic.” I had questions: Was this guy some kind of computer whiz? What kind of AI allows someone to produce that kind of material? Then I saw this headline on Ground News [ [link removed] ]:
Of course! Anyone who has scrolled through X recently can tell you what a cesspool it has become. And a few months back, Grok had labeled itself as “Mecha-Hitler” and spewed some antisemitic garbage, so this seemed well within the realm of possibility. I clicked on the headline to get a summary of the story.
Here, I have selected “Bias Comparison,” which reveals a Ground AI summary of how the story is framed on the left, right, and center without making any value judgments. It seems that news sources aligned with the owner of the Mecha-Hitler AI are framing the government as “fascist.” Irony is dead.
Under the summary, I see there are 99 articles on this story. I usually with what is being reported in right-leaning sources. “Mixed Factuality” sources like Guido Fawkes are often the most entertaining.
From Guido Fawkes:
“As Ofcom launches its investigation into Musk’s X, threatening a full-on ban, its top brass are raking in the cash. Their latest accounts quietly released over the weekend show CEO Melanie Dawes pocketed a cool £385,000 in 2025 – an inflation-busting 8% increase on 2024. That’s more than double what the Prime Minister earns….”
They don’t mention what Ofcom is investigating but seem to think it’s quite a big deal that the CEO made 8% more in 2025 than in 2024. Her roughly $500K in compensation is quaint by CEO standards, and in no way related to the investigation into X.com’s AI pornbot. The implied argument is that the investigation is questionable because the CEO of the entity conducting the investigation made more money in 2025 than in 2024. That is a nonsensical distraction, a red herring, a whole lotta bunk. It does make me wonder, though, how much National Football League officials were paid this season. Did those who called penalties on the Minnesota Vikings make more this season than last? How does their pay compare to the Prime Minister’s? Should the Vikings be declared the winners of this year’s Super Bowl? Should we convert the entire event into a Bad Bunny concert?
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Now, I know the trolls and Green Bay Packer fans will come after me on social media and dismiss this story as just another hit piece by a woke leftist Vikings fan, but I’m guessing that my news and opinion consumption is much more balanced that theirs. On the right side of the Ground News [ [link removed] ] home page, I can click on “See what you’re reading” to look at the ideological balance of my article reading on Ground News over periods ranging from a week to a year.
I’m sure Guido Fawkes would say that reading two more articles from left-leaning sources than from right-leaning ones is the same as membership in the Communist Party (which I assume exists), but I think I might be more fair and balanced than Fox News. Also, I didn’t get a big raise in 2025 and I’m sure I don’t make more money than the Prime Minister—yet.
I’m not sure how one gets Grok to cough up content that can get you jailed, and I don’t plan to experiment. I have enough trouble getting that electronic spy, Alexa, to play the correct song when I ask. How “Darkness on the Edge of Town” becomes “Barbie Girl” I will never know. I suspect sabotage.
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