Bill: Draft Journalistic Transparency Act

[Kaiserin_]

A
BILL
To

Create standards for journalistic transparency​

The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:

1 - Short Title and Enactment
(1) This Act may be cited as the ‘Journalistic Transparency Act.'
(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.
(3) This Act has been authored by Rep. Kaiserin_ with assistance from Sen. CaseyLeFaye, Rep. Omegabiebel, and Moyfr.
(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Rep. JunoAndrist.

2 - Reasons
(1) The people of the Commonwealth are entitled to know who writes the news they’re reading, and what conflicts of interest they might have.
(2) To ensure a transparent news environment, free from misinformation.

3 - Transparency Standards
(1) All articles published in the #news channel of the DemocracyCraft Discord must list the following information in a clearly visible place within the message embed containing the article or the associated web page, if applicable:
(a) The owner(s) and/or manager(s) of the organisation publishing the article.
(i) Companies that classify as corporations and have more than one owner are exempt from being listed, however, manager(s) shall still be included.
(b) The author(s) of the article.
(c) Any government positions held by the author(s) of the article.
(i) Positions in government departments that do not involve the management of employees and/or voting on applications do not need to be listed.
(d) Membership and leadership positions of the author(s) in any political organisation or party, as well as any business, not including the organisation publishing the article.
(e) If the article describes an event and the author(s) of the article were involved in said event, that information must be disclosed.
(2) Whistleblowers, as defined in the Whistleblower Protection Act 2020, Commercial Standards Act, and any similar future legislation shall be exempt from these standards.
(3) Articles created for comedic purposes shall be exempt from all transparency standards except for those outlined in 1.(a) and 1.(b).

4 - Offences
(1) These criminal offences are established under the Standardized Criminal Code Act and are enforced by the Department of Public Affairs.
(2) Journalistic Misrepresentation (Original: Kaiserin_, Apr 24, 2025)
(i) Classification: Summary Offence
The act of publishing or authoring an article in the #news channel that does not meet the journalistic transparency standards. This crime and its punishments are applied to the offending organisation or publisher as well as the authors.
First Offence: Verbal warning and removal of offending article
Second Offence: $500 fine and removal of offending article
Third and Further Offences: $1,000 fine, removal of offending article, and ban from posting in #news for a period of two weeks.

5 - Definitions
(1) The following definitions shall only apply for the purposes of this act.
(2) "Article" shall mean any text-based publication created by a news organisation and published to the #news channel on the DemocracyCraft Discord server.
(3) “Author” shall mean any person who writes a significant portion of the text of an article. Editors who make changes that do not change the meaning of the article shall not be considered authors.