BACKiN Editorial Code of Ethics

BACKiN acknowledges its role as a Content Creator of social media on the internet – that this role carries with it the responsibility to be honest, fair, and respectful; to present fact as fact and opinion as opinion.

1. Freedom of Speech. We champion Freedom of Speech, Information, Expression, and Publication, and as a Content Creator we exercise and protect these rights, which are foundational elements of democracy.

2. Critical perspective. As a Content Creator we seek to shed critical light on health and society. As participants in the sharing of knowledge and creating discussion we believe in the importance of looking at what the world presents us, and what we as Content Creators present from a critical perspective, and to use our influence toward the good, the protection, and wellbeing of humankind.

3. Power of words. Words and images are powerful and should be used with care. When publishing content, we seek to present the facts as they are, and opinion as opinion.

4. State allegiances. We believe that stating facts of allegiance preserves the informational value of our content. To preserve our trustworthiness and integrity as a Content Creator, our intention is to state any relation, financial, personal, political or otherwise, to the subject or topic being presented.

5. Sources. To ensure transparency, we believe in the importance of revealing content sources unless doing so can harm a source. We seek to ensure the credibility of our sources through independent verification of facts; to give proper attribution when quoting, using or basing our content on the work of others; and to preserve the intended meaning of any given statement.

6. Inaccuracies. We are committed to correcting mistakes immediately if any error or inaccuracy is discovered in our content.

7. Open discussion. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog. We are committed to open, civil discussion. We say online what we would say in person.

*Our editorial code of ethics is largely based on the U.S. State Department’s “Global Issues: Media and Ethics”, Tim O’Reilly’s Blogger’s Code of Conduct, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s Code of Ethics for Bloggers, Social Media and Content Creators.