How catchpenny.asia decides what to publish, and what we won’t touch
catchpenny.asia is a satire and humor publication. Every article on this site that reads like a news report, an official statement, or a quote from a named public figure is satirical, invented for comedic and critical effect, and should not be relied upon as factual reporting. This page exists so that fact is stated clearly, once, in plain language, without undermining the individual articles that are written to be read straight.
Who We Target
Our satire aims at power: governments, corporations, institutions, and public figures, in roughly that order of preference. We do not write satire aimed at private individuals, and we do not build humor around a person’s ethnicity, nationality, disability, or any other characteristic they didn’t choose. If a piece needs a stereotype to work, we consider that a sign the piece isn’t finished yet, not a shortcut to a punchline.
How We Choose Targets
A piece gets published if it makes a real point about power, absurdity, or hypocrisy, and gets held back if it doesn’t — a surprisingly high bar that kills more drafts than readers probably assume. We ask, for every piece, whether the joke would still work if the target had more power rather than less; if the answer is no, it usually doesn’t run.
Handling Sensitive Political Content
Some of the markets we cover carry genuine legal and personal risk for satire aimed at leadership, and we take that seriously in how we frame factual background sections specifically, even while our satirical content stays in the same register everywhere. We don’t self-censor the satire itself based on a country’s press-freedom record, but we’re careful never to present invented material in a way that could plausibly be mistaken for a real leaked document, transcript, or statement.
Fact vs. Satire on This Site
Our country and region pages are built in two parts: a factual background section covering that country’s or region’s actual satirical and media history, sourced from real reporting and named where possible, followed by original satirical content in our usual voice. The factual sections are held to normal journalistic accuracy standards. The satirical sections are not factual reporting under any circumstances, regardless of how straight they’re written — that straightness is the format, not a claim about reality.
Sourcing Standards
When our factual background sections reference real outlets, real historical events, or real public figures, we source those claims to actual reporting and avoid inventing quotes or attributing statements to people who never made them. Invented officials, invented statistics, and invented quotes exist only inside our clearly satirical content, never inside the factual framing around it.
Bylines and Pseudonyms
Many satire publications, including several we admire in this region, publish under house pseudonyms rather than writers’ legal names, for reasons ranging from personal privacy to genuine safety in more restrictive media markets. We follow the same approach for some of our contributors and consider it a legitimate editorial choice, not a transparency problem, as long as the factual sections around that writer’s work remain properly sourced.
Third-Party Content and Syndication
Where we reference or summarize reporting from outside outlets in our factual background sections, we credit that source and avoid reproducing substantial passages of anyone else’s original writing. Our satirical content is always original to catchpenny.asia unless specifically noted as a guest piece or cross-post from a partner outlet.
Corrections
Factual errors in our background sections get corrected when flagged, with a note added to the piece where the correction is substantive. We don’t retroactively edit satirical articles to make them more or less accurate, since accuracy was never the point of that section in the first place. See our contact page to flag an error.
How This Policy Relates to Individual Articles
Nothing in this policy changes how an individual satirical article is written — those pieces stay fully in character, with no internal disclaimer breaking the format, because a disclaimer inside a joke usually kills the joke. This page is where that disclosure lives instead, permanently, clearly, and separately from the content it’s disclosing.
Legal Sensitivity by Market
Several countries our satire covers carry real legal risk for political commentary, and we’re aware our audience in some of those markets may face different consequences for reading or sharing this content than a reader in, say, Japan or the Philippines would. We publish from outside those jurisdictions and don’t ask readers to take on risk we’re not taking ourselves — if a piece feels like it’s asking too much of you locally, that’s worth trusting your own judgment on.
Images and Attribution
Images used alongside our articles are either original, licensed, or used under fair-use commentary standards where a real image is directly relevant to a factual background section; we don’t fabricate images designed to look like authentic leaked photographs or official documents, since that crosses from satire into something closer to disinformation.
Advertising Separation
Advertising and sponsorship on catchpenny.asia is kept visually and editorially separate from our satirical content, and no advertiser has influence over which countries, officials, or institutions we choose to satirize. If that separation ever breaks down on a specific piece, readers should assume something has gone wrong editorially and are welcome to flag it through our contact page.
Changes to This Policy
We update this page when our editorial approach changes in any way that affects how readers should interpret our content. Significant changes will be dated and noted here directly rather than published quietly.