- Image by rio.- via Flickr
It doesn’t matter if you are the owner of a website or simply a contributor to that website; the fact remains that you want to always make sure you are writing content that is within the bounds of free speech. This might seem like an easy task if you are writing about sports or the weather but when you are writing real content and writing serious things about real people and public figures, you have to be careful. The freedom of speech that you have does not mean that you can say whatever you want about whoever you want. You have to be careful if you don’t want to end up getting your content yanked or end up in the middle of a lawsuit.
First of all, the site you write for matters quite a bit to the kind of content you create and post on the site. If you are the owner of the site then it’s important to establish a style or content that will remain consistent. The reason for this is that if you publish a story about someone that is meant to be satire then it helps to be doing it on a satirical website; then it will keep you from being targeted for slander. Now, slander is hard to prove but it’s harder for someone to convince a jury that what you wrote could be believed by someone else when it’s posted on a site where it is all about making up stories and printing satire.
The other thing to do is to make sure that everything you print is believable, truth, or just not a bald faced lie. Saying someone is cheating on their spouse and reporting it as news is unlawful without evidence to back up your claim. You can print what you want as long as you are responsible about what you are printing.