External Assessments
How outside bodies rate this newspaper — including the ratings that go against us, the complaint that was upheld, and the prize we asked to have taken back.
A newspaper's account of its own reliability is worth very little. This page collects what other people say about They Buried: media-rating organisations, a complaints board, and the awards juries that have shortlisted us and, once, un-awarded us.
We publish all of it, in full, in each body's own words, whether or not it flatters us. We do not appeal ratings we think are correct, we do not lobby raters, and we have never asked any of these organisations to change an entry.
Treat these as data points and not as verdicts. Every one of these bodies has a methodology, every methodology has a shape, and we set out what we think each one's shape is underneath its entry — including where we think a body's method is wrong about us in our favour.
Reliability 41.2 / 64 · Bias −3.1 (slight left of centre)
Opinion or Wide Variation in Reliability
Their method
Three trained analysts of declared differing political leanings rate a sample of articles on a reliability axis and a bias axis. Scores are averaged; outlets are plotted. Sample size for They Buried was 24 articles.
Their finding
They Buried performs strongly on evidence and sourcing sub-scores (54.8/64, top decile of all outlets rated) and is dragged down the reliability axis by the analysts' 'claim plausibility' sub-score, on which it records the lowest figure in the chart's history.
This outlet's methodology is markedly better than its subject matter. Sourcing, transparency and correction practice are exemplary and would place it in the top band of our chart. The claim-plausibility sub-score is the lowest we have ever recorded and cannot be set aside, because our readers use this chart to decide what to believe.
Our response
We have no complaint about this. It is the correct result from a chart that measures what it says it measures. A rating body that scored us well on plausibility would be a rating body worth nothing.
87 / 100
Meets seven of nine criteria
Their method
A nine-point checklist: no false content, gathers information responsibly, corrects errors, distinguishes news from opinion, avoids deceptive headlines, discloses ownership, discloses financing, names content creators, and provides contact information.
Their finding
Passes eight criteria at maximum weight. Fails one: 'does not repeatedly publish false content.' The auditors record that our failure of this criterion is total, deliberate, disclosed on every page, and unlike any other case in their register.
We have never before had to score an outlet that fails our first criterion while exceeding every other one. Our register has no category for a publication whose content is entirely false by design and whose disclosure of that fact is the most prominent element on every page. We have scored it as we would score anyone. We note that the outlet asked us not to make an exception for it.
Our response
We wrote to Provenance Ratings before their audit and asked them not to create a category for us. They didn't. We would rather carry a permanent failure on their first criterion than be graded on a curve that no other publication gets.
Factual reporting: VERY LOW · Bias: not classifiable
Satire — Questionable Source register
Their method
Editorial review by the Ledger's own staff against a published rubric, with a public appeal process.
Their finding
Listed on the Questionable Source register under the satire flag. The Ledger's note records that the outlet is 'transparently labelled and unlikely to deceive', and that it is registered anyway because the register is of content and not of intent.
Transparently labelled satire. Extensive disclosure. No evidence of any attempt to deceive. Registered under our standing policy that factual-reporting ratings describe content, not motive. Readers should treat every claim on this site as false.
Our response
Correct, and we link to it from our own About page.
Complaint 2025/311 — UPHELD in part
Accuracy (clause 1); remedy ordered and complied with
Their method
A complaint by a named individual, heard by a panel of three, with written submissions from both sides published in full.
Their finding
Two named individuals were listed by this newspaper as attendees of a private conference on the basis of a photograph of an attendance sheet. Neither attended. The board found the transcription negligent rather than reckless, ordered a correction of equal prominence, and criticised this newspaper for transcribing a document 'at speed, from a telephone photograph, checked by one person'.
The publication's correction was prompt, prominent, and unusually complete: it disclosed the magnification at which the document was re-read and the process change made. That does not undo the harm to the complainants, and the board records that the harm should not have occurred. Complaint upheld under clause 1.
Our response
Upheld, and rightly. We printed two people's names as having been somewhere they were not. Our correction and our apology are permanent and are linked from this entry. The board's criticism of our transcription practice was accurate and we changed it: no document is now transcribed by fewer than two people, independently, at stated magnification.
The correction and apology →
Shortlist, 2026
Documents & Archives category
Their method
Judged by five working journalists from outside the entrant pool.
Their finding
Shortlisted for the public rejected-documents drawer in The Vault. Did not win. The judges' published note called the practice of publishing refused documents 'the single most imitable thing in this year's entries' and awarded the prize to a regional weekly.
We would encourage every entrant next year to steal the rejected-documents drawer. It costs nothing and it is the clearest signal of good faith we saw in ninety entries.
Our response
We lost to a better entry. The rejected drawer is not ours and never was — take it.
Awarded 2023, withdrawn 2023
Withdrawn by the awarding body
Their method
Judged annually; withdrawal is at the trustees' discretion.
Their finding
Awarded for a story whose central measurement this newspaper retracted eleven days later. The trustees withdrew the award. This newspaper had written to them requesting the withdrawal six days before they acted.
The trustees withdraw the 2023 award. We record that the request originated with the recipient and that we were, frankly, not looking forward to making the decision ourselves.
Our response
We asked for it to be taken back. Keeping a prize for a story we had retracted was not a close call.
What we do about a rating we disagree with
Nothing, in public, beyond writing the paragraph above. We do not contact raters to argue, we do not run editorials about them, and we do not encourage readers to complain on our behalf. If a rating is wrong, the way to change it is to file better stories for a year and be re-assessed.
One rating we think is too kind
The Sextant chart's sourcing sub-score places us in its top decile. We think that sub-score is measuring the presence of a sources box rather than the quality of what is in it, and that any outlet could obtain the same score by printing a box of the same shape with worse names in it. We have written to Sextant to say so. They disagree. Their disagreement is in their entry above and we have not printed a rejoinder to it.