Civility, Online Publishing and Insurance Risk

This month we have a cover story from IA Magazine written by Russ Banham, titled Playing Publisher and a story from the Akron Beacon Journal written by Dave Scott which discusses an effort to create a Civility Pledge.  It’s interesting to me and frankly hits incredibly close to home how these two elements are so interconnected, then in turn create a liability exposure.  Today it is incredibly easy to vent, through mediums such as this one where we blog our opinion, or Facebook which asks what are you thinking, or Twitter where you limit your thoughts to 140 characters.  Tone can be incredibly difficult to manage and in the end two people may observe two very different messages.  Ultimately, it comes back to good motherly advise, ”if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.  Maybe if more of us did, we would be more civil.  Negativity or proving that someone is wrong is rarely a win.  It’s hard to file a claim or face a lawsuit because of what someone is thinking, but say it or worse publish it and the game changes dramatically.