“The Government of Arunachal Pradesh ensures that Citizens of Arunachal Pradesh receive all benefits entitled to them regarding education and minority welfare…”
In my time with an education technology company, I managed a good team of content professionalswho were most diligent, keen to learn and expand their content abilities. But every now and then we used to have some stories or incidences within our team, which tickled us really bad and enlightened us real good.
The phrase above, was something that a Copywriter from our team had written, while trying to cover “25 Scholarships that North Eastern India didn’t know of“
The news correspondent of ours could stop but laugh throughout the day and make fun of the poor missy. She didn’t even know what bomb had she dodged by my identification of this contextual mistake, until finally someone from the News & PR Team explained it to her…
So how do you know your content is ethically and politically correct? How do you ensure that it doesn’t raise any eyebrows, being read & discussed upon? Let’s be ethically correct and then we’d worry about the perceptively used political correctness.
How to ensure Ethical Correctness in your Content
The Disparity between ‘Fact’ and your ‘Representation’
Your facts may be quoted right, they may have been sourced right but the context that you build around it makes all the difference. User reads your content with the bias of it being accurate and most informed; that’s why they’ve chosen your content. The dissonance between your representation and the true nature of facts should be least possible.
Check if the information has been stated Truthfully, Honestly, Fairly or not?
Avoid Fraud! Gotta be blunt!
Research well, legal guidelines about advertising clearly demark the distinction between misrepresentation and fraud. Any business that has seen more than a few winters go by would vouch for this “Content that Exaggerates or Undermines facts does not only scores but backfires as well”.
There’s a great difference between writing persuasively and using your skill to exploit the gullibility of the reader. As the leaders of Content Business would say: “Let the content, drive ratings and not the other way round”
Is there any space for Misinterpretation?
“I shot an elephant in my pyjamas”, each reader could brew a different (not necessarily unique) interpretation of this statement. “Racheal Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog” that’s even more baffling.
Make sure and be reasonably confident that your content in the format that you’ve finalised; would be understood exactly as you’ve presumed. A deviation or even slightest leverage can be difference between ‘life and death’ (of your advertisement campaign)
Take requisite cautionary actions. On a decent note, have your content read by someone before submission. If not deep reading, then atleast let them take a look enough for their eyes to glaze over necessary points. Use your punctuations carefully and check for demographic changes in context of content.
Preserve the Self-Esteem of your reader
Even if you’re writing a puff piece about how to address an alcoholic husband, allow leverage enough not to demean the honour of the reader. Your personal opinions about any concept, occurrence, phenomenon, news, belief, idea, and practice should not be the bearer of your Content.
Know what a ‘Libel’ is, know the rules around it for the regional, national and professional fraternity of your content benefactor. In the times when Viral is how worth of content valued, it’s easy to drift away with lucrativeness of what is rewarding and what is warranted. Receiver’s Self-Worth is of a lot more value than any monetization an excerpt could create. Either keep that in mind or choose your Content Service Providers with integrity enough to embrace this fact.
Check if your Graphics say the same thing as your Content
Distortion of facts in graphics is a commonplace habit of miscreants of content. Catching eyeballs becomes a necessity when visual content scores more than written. And then unloading of some low performing proposition not only turns of the customer for the moment but cancels out your value proposition for the next many instances to come (probably forever).
Call for contribution
Anymore points to add, feel free to comment. If you liked what we’ve brought forward, go ahead and share it with other content professionals around. Most of the professionals are looking for guidance like this to create content that is valuable and profitable in ethical and political context. Please do wait for our next article where we tell you how to politically correct for generating creative content. Visit our YouTube Channel for more details about our services.
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