Overall safety ratings are best pulled from sources that update, rather than reputation, which lags reality in both directions; plenty of countries are far safer than their old headlines, and a few trade on an image they no longer earn. The gold standard is your own government's travel advisory, which most countries publish with tiered levels from exercise-normal-precautions up to do-not-travel, broken down by region, since national ratings often mask the fact that ninety percent of a country is calm while one border area drives the warning. Reading two or three countries' advisories about the same destination filters out any single government's political coloring.
Beyond advisories, useful signals include global peace and safety indexes for broad context, and, more practically, recent threads in expat forums and travel communities for the on-the-ground picture that no advisory captures: which scams are current, which neighborhoods shifted, how solo travelers are finding things this season.
The local layer completes it. Hotel staff, drivers and resident foreigners will tell you candidly where not to walk at night, and their advice is worth more than any national score. In most of the world, tourist risk is dominated by petty theft and traffic accidents rather than violence, so seatbelts, road caution and pickpocket awareness address the statistically real dangers.