Category: Ethics

Ethics, New York City, travel, vacation, work, writer, writing

Beautiful: Integrity, Ethics, and Character are Non-Negotiables in Freelance Writing

Christa Avampato
What a beautiful world that would be
What a beautiful world that would be

I don’t ever write anything unless I believe it and support it 100%. That kind of standard has a price. I have a client that wanted me to write a post about crime in Central Park. This is a perfect topic for me because I live on the park and go at least once a day with Phin. I’m very passionate about the park and I like to share my passion for the place with readers. In the past couple of months, I’ve been alarmed by the crimes reported in New York City’s parks, Central Park included. In addition to analyzing crime stats of Central Park for the piece for this client, I also wanted to include a list of safety tips, particularly geared toward tourists who visit the park for the first time.

The client wants a rewrite. They want the piece to be softer and to position the park as a very safe place as opposed to being more data and safety-oriented. They also want it filled with links back to other parts of their site that have nothing to do with crime. I won’t do the re-write and here’s why:

1.) Crime and safety are not soft subjects and they are not topics that should be sugar-coated. Balanced certainly, but being soft on crime in content development is irresponsible. Readers need to armed with the facts: Central Park is far safer than it was 20 years ago and visitors still need to keep safety top-of-mind. They shouldn’t take safety in Central Park for granted because crime is down compared to 20 years ago.

2.) I’m protecting the site from a potential PR disaster. Let’s say that a tourist reads this “softer” article on crime and is lulled into a false sense of security during their visit. If something should happen to that visitor and they say, “I read on (name of site) that Central Park is so safe and look what happened to me” the site could be held responsible. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take with someone’s safety.

3.) Link loaded pieces, under the guise of content marketing, are no better than spam. A few links are helpful. 20 links in one article looks ridiculous. Whenever I see a piece loaded with links, I don’t even read it because I assume it is no better than a paid advertisement. I think this type of piece crosses an ethical line for the sake of marketing. I’ll leave that to other people who want to write those kinds of pieces. It’s not for me.

I did publish the piece, as is, on Allvoices.com. As freelancers, we cobble together our living from a number of different sources. Every dollar counts and sometimes it can feel like we’re backed into a corner, subject to extreme editing (many times by people who are not writers, nor editors) for the benefit of paying clients and at a detriment to our own standards. It’s tough to walk away from money. It’s even more difficult to walk away from money for work I’ve already done and won’t be paid for because I refuse to compromise my principles. However, I go to bed every night with a clear conscience knowing I’ve helped a lot of people and not harmed any. And that’s much more important.

education, Ethics, Junior Achievement

My Year of Hopefulness – Find Another Way

Christa Avampato

After last week’s class on ethics topics in newspapers, I was getting back to the curriculum. Or at least I thought I was. Some of the students felt badly about not bringing in a story the week before. One student in particular, Starling, loves to talk. He loves raising his hand and de-railing conversations with wacky questions. On occasion I ask him to please make his questions relevant to the topic at hand. He loves questions that start with “What if…” Most of the time, I take his questions and we run with them because I’ve found that they lead somewhere that helps the class laugh a little while we explore this very serious topic of Ethics.

Today, Starling came into class with a topic he really wanted to talk about: Chris Brown and Rihanna. Given that the news converge and messaging to teenagers on this topics has been atrocious, I took full-advantage of getting to discuss this topic openly with teenagers. The entire class could lay out every detail of the case. What was startling is that almost everyone, male and female, looked at the case from Chris Brown’s POV. No one really considered Rihanna beyond being an object of Chris Brown’s actions. They hadn’t considered how they’d feel or what they’d do if they were Rihanna. She went back to him, her choice. She loves him. He “took her back.” What else could there be to consider?

We had 5 minutes remaining in the class after laying out all of the details and a lot more that could be said. I had only one chance, very brief, to communicate the message that I wanted them to hear, at least once, from an adult. “Did you hear Oprah’s comments on the situation?” Blank stares. “She said, “Love doesn’t hurt. And if someone hits someone once, they will hit them again.” It is never okay to hit anyone unless you are physically protecting yourself. Ever. Violence is not a solution, and it has no place in personal relationships. Ever.”

“Even if she was yelling at him in the car about how he was cheating on her?” Starling asked. “Even if he told her she needed to shut up or he’d punch her?”

“Yes, Starling. Even then.” I said.

He looked at me, with a mix of suspicion and confusion. And I realized that at least for one student, I got through to him to suggest that there is a different way out of conflict than violence.

business, economy, Ethics, legal

My Year of Hopefulness – New Directions Caused by Unfortunate Circumstances

Christa Avampato

A friend of mine called me this evening to tell me about an extremely unfortunate incident at his place of work. It’s something that I imagine a lot of people are facing these days: bad behavior. We read stories in the newspaper about the desperation of people in this economy – violent crime is up, bank robberies are rising, and bad practices of good businesses are being uncovered every day. My friend uncovered today that his company has been inflating top line sales by purchasing their own goods and writing off the expense. And now he is faced with a very serious ethical and legal dilemma. Say something or move on? For him, sticking around while this is happening is not something that he can do.

His situation is complicated by the fact that he works for a public company (and a troubled one at that) and he has no solid proof of the transactions in writing. This piece of information was conveyed on a conference call that he had the misfortune to be on – everyone on the call was aware that this had been happening except for him. He had wondered how his company sales could be going along okay, far better than the competition, at a time like this. Curiosity can sometimes uncover truths we never dreamed of and never wanted.

A friend of his said that clearly the Universe is sending him this information for a reason. Bombshells like this don’t fall from the sky without a purpose. It is a moment of teaching. For some time, my friend has been considering whether or not the big corporate life is really for him. Originally he went into it for a lot of the same reasons many people went into it – to make a good living, good benefits, the chance to be promoted, the opportunity to work for a company with great influence on our society. Now with the fundamental shift in the marketplace that we are experiencing, the futures of those in corporate America may have shifted as well. Perhaps the days of easy living that so many experienced have passed us by. We have lived through and beyond the “good old days”. Bob Dylan’s most famous words never rang truer.

My friend is experiencing the hard, sad truth about some companies that we have admired for so long, held up as the gold standard in business: winning shows part of a company’s character and losing (or at least not winning as easily or as big as it used to) shows all of it. My friend has considered striking out on his own and I think this most recent incident at work may push him to finally take the plunge.

He’s been betting on his company for a long time – he’s invested many years of his life with them and has been moving through the system as a good clip. Today he realized that the system he thought he was a part of is really smoke and mirrors. After the hurt and disbelief subsides, there is a huge lesson in all of this for him, and for all of us. Tomorrow he’s cashing in his chips, walking away from the table, and making a new bet on himself and his own ideas. In a very serious tone he summed up the trade-off to me: “I may not get to win as big or as often as I imagined doing with this company, but at least I get to make the rules I live by and keep my integrity.”

corporate social responsibility, Ethics, high school, Junior Achievement

Junior Achievement – Ethics Class 2

Christa Avampato

I was considerably less nervous for my second week teaching Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility at the High School for Finance and Economics. Maybe it’s because I knew the students (at least a little). Maybe it’s because I knew where the building was and which classroom was mine. Whatever the reason, I was able to manage my time better and improvise a bit more with a greater deal of success.

What I found most interesting is that the students are thinking about ethics all the time, they just don’t have the term for it. Some students who did not speak up at all and were disruptive to the class in the first session were more engaged in the discussion this second time. One in particular is showing a lot of promise. Last time he had no interest in ethics and this time he was leading the classroom in some very profound statements about the situations we were discussing.

In an effort to get students to see that the subject of ethics is all around them, I have asked each of them to bring an article that deals with an ethical dilemma to our next class. The article can be from any section of the paper, any magazine, or any website. We’ll talk through the articles and see how the students reason through ethical decision making. I’ll let you know how it goes!