FieldP-11 · Run this before you publish anything
Check the Harm and the Law
Stop an investigation from becoming the harm it was meant to expose.
Step 1
Name Every Person the Finding Touches
Including the ones who are only adjacent. Ask what happens to each if you are wrong.
Step 2
Apply the Misidentification Test
In 2013 a crowd on a message board named a missing student as a bombing suspect on nothing more than a resemblance. He had already died by suicide weeks earlier; his family was hounded while the claim spread. The platform apologized afterward. Afterward is the operative word.
Step 3
Minimize Identifying Data
Home addresses, workplaces, family members and children do not go in a finding unless they are the finding. Publishing them is doxxing whether or not the target is guilty.
Step 4
Check the Access Was Lawful
Using someone’s credentials, or getting into a system you are shut out of, is a computer-crime exposure. Obtaining records by pretending to be someone else — pretexting — is separately prohibited for financial and phone records.
Step 5
Check the Recording Rule
Consent to record calls is one-party in some jurisdictions and all-party in others. Check the jurisdictions of every participant, not only your own.
Step 6
Check What You Are Asserting
A published false statement of fact about a person has legal consequences that a published question does not. Write what the evidence supports, in the tense the evidence supports.
Step 7
Offer a Right of Reply
Offer a right of reply in writing, through an editor, organization or trusted adult, never in person and never alone. If the subject may be dangerous or you are under 18, do not contact them yourself.
Step 8
Check Yourself
Sustained exposure to violent material has documented effects. Working hours, exposure limits and support are part of the method, not a weakness.
How It Fails
The correct finding delivered in a way that ruins an innocent person, and the true story that cannot be used because of how it was obtained.