Methodology

How RatedNews works

RatedNews is a community-powered news aggregator. We pull articles from 200+ outlets and let readers rate what they read. Every score you see comes from the community — no algorithms, no AI scoring.

What we aggregate

RatedNews aggregates headlines from 200+ news outlets, refreshed continuously throughout the day. Articles are grouped by story so you can compare how different outlets cover the same event.

We ingest titles, summaries, images, and publication times. We don't fetch or process full article HTML — the article always opens on the publisher's own website.

How outlet ratings work

Trust on RatedNews is rated at the outlet level — the news source, not the individual article. A source's score is where the community's collective judgement is most meaningful, and it's the number that reaches a reliable sample fastest. Any signed-in reader can rate an outlet with a single tap, and change it any time. A rating is:

Overall stars

1–5 stars — your overall trust in the outlet as a news source. Deliberately simple: one honest signal, aggregated across many readers.

How outlet scores are calculated

An outlet's community score is the average star rating from all reader ratings, expressed out of 100 (5 stars = 100, 1 star = 20). The rating count is always shown so you can judge the sample size yourself.

An outlet with 3 ratings has a much less reliable score than one with 300. We show total ratings everywhere scores appear — a high score from a small sample should be taken with caution.

Known limitations

Publishing limitations is more useful than hiding them.

Ratings reflect perception, not verified fact

A reader marking an article "Inaccurate" means they found it unconvincing — not that the claims have been independently fact-checked. Community ratings aggregate perception across many readers, which is valuable, but it's not the same as professional fact-checking.

Small sample sizes produce unreliable scores

An outlet or article with very few ratings can have a score that doesn't represent the broader readership. We display rating counts wherever scores appear so you can weigh the reliability yourself.

Reader demographics affect scores

If an outlet's readership skews heavily in one political direction, their ratings may reflect that. RatedNews has no control over who rates what. Treat community scores as a collective impression, not a ground truth.

Not all articles get rated

Most articles won't have any community ratings, especially newer ones. An article without ratings isn't a good or bad article — it just hasn't been rated yet.

Questions about the methodology or spotted something wrong? Get in touch.