Labels, law, platforms and money: the practical side of publishing things that are not true
Running a satirical website raises questions the average blog never has to answer: how to signal that the content is satire, what legal protection you have when a real person objects, how to stay on the right side of advertising rules, and what to do on the day a stranger shares your joke as fact. This guide takes those questions in the order you will meet them. It is written from the United Kingdom, so the law is English law, but the labelling, platform and advertising sections apply anywhere.
What a satirical website needs before it publishes anything
If you are working out how to start a satire website, the writing is the easy part. Six things need to be in place first.
- A target and a voice. Know what the site is making fun of and in whose voice.
- A name that is your own. Not a near-copy of a real news brand.
- A label nobody can miss. On every page, without scrolling.
- A working grasp of defamation and copyright. Enough to know when to ask a lawyer.
- An honest About page. Who publishes the site and how to reach them.
- A plan for being believed. It will happen. Decide now what you will do.
Step 1: Decide what the site is for
Satire needs a target. A site with no target is a collection of made-up stories, and made-up stories with no point are what fact-checkers rate as false. Before the first article, write one sentence that completes “This site exists to make fun of”. Politics, a city, an industry, a profession, the news media itself: any of these will do. The sentence will settle most editorial arguments you have later.
Then pick the form. Most satirical sites imitate a newspaper, because the gap between a solemn news voice and an absurd event is the most reliable joke available. Our guides to how to write satire and spoof headlines cover the craft.
Step 2: Choose a name and domain you can defend
British satire has a tradition of titles that sound like dull local papers. That is fine. What is not fine is a name, logo or web address chosen to be mistaken for a specific real publication. That invites a complaint for passing off or trade mark infringement, it breaks advertising rules on misrepresenting who you are, and it tells fact-checkers that the site is built to deceive.
A workable test: if a reader who knows the real brand would look twice and then laugh, you are parodying it. If they would not notice the difference, you are impersonating it.
Step 3: Label the site as satire, properly
This is the step that protects you most and costs least. A label does not kill the joke. Readers who arrive on purpose already know what you are, and readers who arrive by accident are the ones who cause trouble.
Where the label goes on a satirical website
Fact-checking organisations have published their own standards for this, and they are worth following because their ratings decide how far your stories travel on social media. Lead Stories’ satire policy, for example, says the signal that a story is fiction must be visible without scrolling or clicking. A “satire” tag hidden in a footer, on a separate page, in tiny text or in a pale colour is treated as evidence of an attempt to deceive. A story rated false has its distribution cut. A story rated satire mostly does not.
In practice that means:
- a strapline under the masthead on every page, in normal-sized type;
- an About page that says in the first sentence that the content is satire;
- a category or tag on each article that reads “Satire”;
- the site name on every image made for sharing, so the label survives a screenshot.
Tell the machines as well
Search engines and platforms read structured data. The schema.org vocabulary includes a type made for the job: SatiricalArticle, defined as an article “whose content is primarily satirical in nature, i.e. unlikely to be literally true”. Use it in place of NewsArticle in your article markup. It takes a developer ten minutes and it puts your intentions on the record in a form that software can read.
Step 4: Understand the law before you need it
None of what follows is legal advice. It is a map of where the risks are. For the detail, read our legal survival guide for UK satirists, and for anything that worries you, pay a media lawyer for an hour.
Defamation
Defamation is the main risk. Two parts of the Defamation Act 2013 matter most to satirists. First, under section 1, a statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the claimant’s reputation. Second, section 3 provides the defence of honest opinion, which requires that the statement was one of opinion, that it indicated the basis for the opinion, and that an honest person could have held it on the facts.
The practical point is how a reasonable reader would understand your words. An obviously absurd claim about a cabinet minister is unlikely to be read as a statement of fact. A plausible-sounding claim that a named local businessman has committed a crime is another matter, and “it was a joke” may not save you. The more believable the invention and the more private the person, the greater the risk.
Working rules:
- Aim at public figures and institutions, not private individuals.
- Make the invented part impossible to mistake for reporting.
- Do not invent criminal offences, illnesses or sexual conduct for real, named people.
- If someone complains, read the piece again as a stranger would before you reply.
Copyright and parody
Since October 2014, section 30A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has said that fair dealing with a work for the purposes of caricature, parody or pastiche does not infringe copyright. The important words are “fair dealing”. The exception lets you borrow enough to make the joke. It does not let you take the whole thing, and it does not cover every right a character’s owner may hold.
The limits are being tested now. In autumn 2025 the producers of the Paddington films began High Court proceedings against the makers of Spitting Image over a YouTube sketch that showed the bear as a foul-mouthed podcast host, citing copyright and design rights. Whatever the outcome, it shows that even an established satirical brand with a parody defence can be made to spend money defending it.
Photographs are the commonest trap for small sites. A news agency photograph is not free to use because the article under it is a joke. License images, use properly licensed free ones, or make your own.
Step 5: Plan for the day someone believes you
Every satirical publisher is eventually quoted as a source. A political party shares the story in anger, a foreign news site translates it, a fact-checker gets in touch. How you respond matters more than the mistake.
- Do not delete the article. The copies are already out there, and the original with its label is the best evidence of what you meant.
- Do not gloat for long. A short, good-humoured note is fine. A campaign of mockery makes the site look as if it wanted to deceive.
- Answer fact-checkers quickly and politely. They are deciding how to rate you. Lead Stories lists the changes that support a re-rating: a clearer header, a visible disclaimer, more prominent satire tags.
- Look at why it was believed. If the piece had no visible target and read like a plausible crime report, the fault may be in the writing.
The stories most often mistaken for news are the ones that confirm what an angry audience already suspects. If a piece could be lifted whole into a hostile Facebook group and used as proof of something, ask whether the joke is doing enough work.
Step 6: Hosting, advertising and paying for it
Advertising rules
Most small sites start with display advertising, which means accepting the ad network’s content policies. Google’s publisher policy on misleading representation says ads may not be placed on pages that misrepresent, misstate or conceal information about the publisher. For a satirical website the answer is the same as for fact-checkers: say plainly who you are. An About page naming the publisher, a contact address and a visible satire label deal with most of it. A site posing as a real local newspaper, with no named publisher, is the kind that loses its ad account.
Other income
Advertising alone rarely pays for writers. The satirical publishers that last tend to sell something directly to readers. Private Eye remains a paper magazine sold on newsstands and by subscription. The Onion relaunched its print edition as a paid monthly subscription in August 2024. Smaller sites use memberships, newsletters, books of collected pieces and merchandise. Decide early which of these you are building towards, because it shapes what you publish: a membership site needs regular readers, an ad-funded one needs strangers.
Hosting and records
Choose a host whose terms allow parody, and read them. Keep dated copies of every article as published, including the label, in case a dispute turns on what a page said on a given day. Set up a contact address that someone reads. Many legal threats can be settled by a prompt, civil reply and a small edit.
Step 7: Set house rules and keep them
Write a one-page policy for yourself and your contributors. It should cover who is fair game, who is not, what happens when a real person complains, and who has the final say. Rules made in advance are easier to follow than rules made during an argument.
A sensible minimum:
- no private individuals as targets;
- no jokes about the victims of a tragedy while it is still unfolding;
- no invented quotes that a reader could reasonably take as real on a serious matter;
- complaints answered within two working days;
- corrections and removals logged.
Satirical website launch checklist
- One-sentence statement of the target
- Original name, logo and domain
- Satire strapline visible on every page without scrolling
- About page naming the publisher and stating the content is satire
- SatiricalArticle structured data on articles
- Site name on every share image
- Licensed or original images only
- Written house rules on targets and complaints
- Monitored contact address
- Archive of published pages
Common questions
Do I have to label satire by law?
We know of no general legal duty in the UK to label satire. A clear label does make it much harder for anyone to argue that readers took your words as fact, and platforms and ad networks expect one.
Can I be sued for a joke?
Yes. Whether the claim succeeds depends on how a reasonable reader would understand the piece and on the harm caused. Being sued is expensive even when you win.
Can I use real people’s names?
Public figures acting in their public role, yes, with care. Private individuals, no.
Where can I see how other sites do it?
Our directory of news satire sites lists the established ones. Read their About pages.
The short version
A satirical website survives on three habits: say clearly what you are, aim at people who can answer back, and keep a straight face in the copy but never in the label. Do those and most of the legal, platform and advertising problems solve themselves before they start.