This petition was submitted during the 2017-2019 parliament
Rejected petition Make it a criminal offence for newspapers to mislead the public before elections
Newspapers are read every day and are often treated as a trusted source of information. It is therefore imperative that they accurately review the information they write and ensure, to the best of their ability, the information they publish is classified as either factual or subjective
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When Newspapers deliberately lie or mislead the electorate, it compromises and severely undermines our democracy. I am therefore calling on Parliament to debate this issue and consider making the deliberate publication of misinformation a criminal offence. A criminal offence constitutes an act that is harmful not only to an individual but also to a community, society or the state. There is a genuine case for this both legally and morally.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
It’s not clear what the petition is asking the UK Government or Parliament to do.
We understand that you're concerned about bias in newspapers, but we're not sure exactly what you'd like the Government or Parliament to do.
It is already possible to complain about the accuracy of a story to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. You can find out more about their work here:
It is also a criminal offence to make or publish any false statement of fact (rather than merely comment or opinion) in relation to a candidate’s personal character or conduct in the run up to an election.
You could start a new petition explaining clearly what you would like the Government or Parliament to do. For example, you could start a new petition asking the UK Government and Parliament to require newspapers to be impartial in their reporting in the run up to an election, if that's what you'd like to happen.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.