Beehive News’ performance, the accuracy of its ratings, and its ability to curate and highlight issues of public interest are continuously monitored and refined by the Ratings Auditing team.

The auditing process for Beehive News’ ratings follows rigorous standards. Periodically, a randomly selected sample of publicly relevant news articles is chosen, and their ratings are audited.

The Ratings Auditing team verifies whether the system’s output objectively and adequately addresses the points on our checklist. This evaluation focuses on the accuracy and sophistication of the assessment, not on its content. For example, if our system identifies an article as using an overly emotional tone, we check whether the assessment provides a clear explanation and appropriate examples of what is considered overly emotional—regardless of whether the team personally agrees with those conclusions.

The Ratings Auditing team cannot create exceptions, make excuses, or manipulate outcomes based on political positions, viewpoints, or the identity of the publisher. They also lack the tools, access, and technical expertise to modify outputs, ensuring the complete autonomy of those outputs.

Two Senior Rating Auditors oversee the rating process. These impartial, international professionals bring proven and reputable expertise in misinformation and behavioural psychology. They maintain no political affiliations and have no connections to any of the publications assessed on the platform.

The Beehive News team, including the Ratings Auditing team, follow the principles, guidelines and safeguards of the Beehive News Charter. Considering the parallel role of the Ratings Auditing team to that of editorial teams of fact-checkers, Beehive News also voluntarily adheres to the codes of practice such as those of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and the European Comission’s Recommendations (EU) 2022/1634 on Editorial Independence.

The roles of Senior Rating Auditors are currently occupied by Rafael Cossi and Adrian Bono.