Right of Reply – Let the World Know the Truth

Reputation has become a crucial intangible asset that can either promote you or sink the ship of your efforts. Executives recognize reputational risks as highly important and even name them as a key business challenge. This is hardly surprising, considering that a not-properly managed reputational risk can quickly escalate into a major issue. In fact, businesses that have experienced such negative consequences claim that reputation problems have the biggest impact on brand revenue and value.

This is relevant for a single individual as well, considering that pre-employment screening and regular check-ups for all employees are becoming more and more widespread, especially in enterprises.

Therefore, scrubbing up your online image is of utmost priority for anyone, from businesses to regular people. Dealing with harmful information isn’t a simple task, though. If you plan to go to court, you'll need a lot of time, resources, and legal/psychological knowledge. We at Reputation America know how to perfect your online reputation quickly, legally, and stress-free.

Being in the reputation management business for 10+ years, we know that the ideal scenario is to get rid of harmful content forever. Therefore, the first thing we do is try to delete the information that poisons our client’s life. If the author, hosting provider, or site admin refuses, we try to deindex or remove the source from organic search. Unfortunately, both approaches aren’t always possible if we are dealing with huge reputable media like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. [text]So, how can you solve the problem and reduce the impact of harmful information? For example, Ryanair, a low-cost airline, saw tons of criticism because of a passenger that verbally attacked an elderly black woman of Jamaican origin. The New York Times, together with other media, released articles describing the whole situation and the airline company’s inaction.

Ryanair did apologize on the official Twitter account, although it wasn’t very guilty, but how many customers saw it? Probably, not many. The same cannot be said for The New York Times article that generated thousands of reads. In this case, it would have been more effective to opt for the right to respond to let people know the company’s point of view. That’s when the right of reply in journalism takes place.

The right of reply is a chance for the accused (rightfully or not) party to share its point of view. It roots back to the Radio Act of 1927, which later, in 1949, evolved into the Fairness Doctrine, stating that the public has the right to hear “all responsible viewpoints on particular issues.”

Today, the right to reply in journalism might not be widely used but is worth utilizing. If harmful information can’t be hidden from people’s eyes and keeps dropping your online image, you can at least minimize the damage by:

• Telling the truth about the situation
• Publicly acknowledging the guilt
• Sharing the consequent changes that will prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future.

Reputation America, on our side, will help you to find all the sources that damage your reputation and develop the winning strategy. We don’t just keep in touch with the authors, editors, and site admins; we also help find the right words. As a result, the article with harmful content will have a couple of lines of text added, expressing your sincere apologies, taken measures, or the truth. This will prevent the escalation of negative sentiments and opinions that readers might come to without knowing your side of the story.

When providing Right of Reply services, we proceed with 4 steps:

1. Assessing the case. If harmful information removal isn’t a viable solution, we consider the effectiveness of the right of reply. If it may deliver a meaningful outcome, we proceed to the next step.
2. Finding contact details. The first person to look for is an author. If, however, finding the contact data doesn’t seem possible, we move to editors, chief editors, site admins, and hosting providers – in a word, anyone who can let us tell the world your point of view.
3. Negotiating. Our team of psychologists, legal advisors, and other specialists develop the negotiation tactics that allow us to get the right to respond. We always implement custom-tailored approaches to reach fast results.
4. Posting a response. We analyze the content and create the most suitable response that will transform the information from negative to positive.

To get the right of reply, you can proceed with the above-mentioned steps yourself. However, prepare to devote a lot of time and effort, and a positive result isn’t guaranteed. That’s why it’s better to turn to Reputation America and the trustworthy assistance of our team:

• We support you during every stage; thus, you will never be alone in the fight against harmful information.
• We keep all secrets and never reveal any sensitive information.
• We always apply a custom approach to every case.
• We provide a lifetime guarantee on our services.
• We save your time by connecting and negotiating with authors ourselves.
• We save you money that you could have spent on lengthy trials.
• We use only legal methods of dealing with harmful information.

Our team is made of professionals whose aim is to keep your online image as flawless as possible.