To avoid being accused of spreading untrue information, be a fact checker. When you write a document in the workplace, your first task is to compose the document; but before you send that project out to your readers, you need to do some fact checking to verify the ideas.
You know all about fact checking from the news. Fact checking isn’t just for political speeches however. In the same way that you will doublecheck your calculations in a budget, you need to confirm the facts and sources that you include in your report.
Read more about the importance of fact checking in the Medium post Three Important Reasons Why You Need to Fact Check Your Content, and then follow up by reading Five Tips for Fact Checking Your Content! Pay particular attention to Tip #3, which will result in different answers for every career field.
4 Comments
One reason why this is an important tip because as a writer your reputation in on the line. Another reason is because your brand is on the line. Finally, the last reason is because incorrect facts can take its own course online.
This XKCD comic explains the issue with fact-checking things on Wikipedia or using Wikipedia as a source: https://xkcd.com/978/
As one of the medium article states, you have to go to the actual source to fact-check information. Just because it is referenced in multiple places doesn’t make it a fact. To spread misinformation only makes it more convincing.
I feel that utilizing fact checking indirectly plays into one’s ethics. Spreading incorrect information can not only ruin your own reputation but also the subject of the incorrect information. If the incorrect information is negative it can wrongfully stigmatize the subject in question.
Paul makes a good point. You as a writer are responsible to spreading the correct information and teaching the public true, unbiased facts. When people willingly leave out points that go against their expected results or twist the information so that its meaning is transformed, they are harming society’s knowledge of what’s right and wrong, creating ignorance and beliefs backed by false facts.