/mal-PUB-lish/ (verb)
“To publish in a manner that constitutes malpractice”
Publishing failures cause real harm. When publishers breach ethical standards, the consequences ripple through society:
These harms don't exist in isolation. They share a common root cause: publishing malpractice ("malpublishing").
You've heard of plagiarism, deepfakes, clickbait, fabrication, and fake news. These are specific publishing failures. Malpublishing is the umbrella term that encompasses them all.
Just as “malpractice” covers many specific medical failures, “malpublishing” covers many specific publishing failures—when they violate a community's standards.
Whether a practice constitutes malpublishing depends on context. Each community defines its own publishing standards. What's unacceptable in one context may be acceptable in another.
This is why publishing policies matter—they make standards explicit.
Your community does—but “community” isn't a single entity.
It's the layered stack of publishing policies that apply to you: your jurisdiction, your industry, your organization, and your specific publication or channel. Each layer may set different standards, and you operate under all of them.
Jurisdiction (national laws, press regulations)
└── Region (state/provincial requirements)
└── Industry (journalism, academia, entertainment)
└── Organization (your company or institution)
└── Publication (specific channel or section)
The same action can be malpublishing in one context and acceptable in another. Consider these scenarios:
A news outlet's standards require disclosure of any AI-generated visuals—publishing without it is malpublishing. A meme community, where AI manipulation is expected and contextually obvious, may have no such requirement.
Journalism ethics require clear separation of editorial and advertising. Influencer marketing operates under different disclosure norms. What's malpublishing in a newspaper may be standard practice on social media—though both contexts have their own evolving standards.
Organization X operating in California faces different disclosure requirements than its Texas office. The same content strategy may be compliant in one region and malpublishing in another—even within the same company.
This is why making your publishing policy explicit matters—it defines which layer you're operating at.
These actions are commonly considered malpublishing in many publishing contexts. Whether they apply in your context depends on your applicable standards.
While standards vary by context, most publishing communities share these baseline understandings:
Writing opinions, theories, or fiction doesn't constitute malpublishing when practices remain ethical within the applicable standards.
Content must be clearly labeled appropriately, and audiences shouldn't be deceived about the content's intent or factual accuracy. A clearly marked opinion piece or satirical article isn't malpublishing—but presenting fiction as fact is.
The key distinction is intent and response. An honest mistake—caught and corrected—isn't malpublishing. Knowing about a problem and ignoring it, or being deliberately unreachable, is.
Note: Some communities may have stricter standards. Academic publishing, for example, may consider certain practices malpublishing that would be acceptable elsewhere.
Mistakes happen. Forgetting to cite a source or publishing an error isn't automatically malpublishing—it becomes malpublishing when you learn of the problem and don't fix it promptly and visibly. What matters is intent and response. These practices help publishers stay accountable:
Be transparent about what the content is—news, opinion, satire, sponsored, AI-generated. Don't deceive audiences about intent.
State what you know, not more. Don't present speculation as fact or certainty you don't have.
Credit where information comes from. Let readers verify claims themselves.
When you learn something is wrong, fix it quickly and visibly. Being unreachable or feigning ignorance is itself malpublishing.
Honor intellectual property, privacy, and human dignity. Get permission when required.
Ready to go deeper? Build a publishing policy tailored to your community.
The term combines the prefix “mal-” (meaning bad or wrongful) with “publish.” This follows established patterns like malpractice and malfunction. It addresses a linguistic gap—naming the root cause of information harms rather than just describing their effects.
In 2023, I observed a pattern: we had dozens of words for specific publishing failures—plagiarism, clickbait, deepfakes, fake news—but no umbrella term for the root cause. We named the symptoms but not the disease.
This linguistic gap matters. Without a shared term for publishing malpractice, we struggle to discuss it, legislate it, or hold it accountable. We talk past each other using different words for the same problem.
“Malpublishing” is my attempt to fill that gap. It's an act of free speech advocating for more responsible speech—naming the harm so we can address it.
I offer this term to the world—and publish it here to give the concept a clear, stable definition. If it helps communities define their standards and hold publishers accountable, it will have served its purpose.
— Roarke Clinton, March 2023
This site introduces the concept. PublishingPolicy.org goes deeper—whether you're a publisher defining standards or a reader understanding them.
Free at publishingpolicy.org