Ethical Storytelling Principles
Journalism, Media & Communications
Literature & Narrative
Modeling & Simulation
1. Social change organizations need to tell stories.
Communications norms have changed; storytelling is an expected form of communication from social change organizations. That’s not going to change.
2. Everyone has a right to privacy.
Benefitting from an organization’s work — or needing help — doesn’t negate someone’s right to privacy.
3. Organizational storytelling is not the press.
Communications do not have the responsibility — or rights — of the press.
4. Promotion is publicity.
Public stories are publicity — whether the story is about an organization, staff person or beneficiary.
5. Stories are how people “make sense” of the world.
Stories can be persuasive, but they are for sense-making, not persuasion.
6. Narrative holds power.
Narration — the ability to determine your own experience — enables agency. Narrating someone else’s experience can threaten agency; take care.
7. Instrumentalization does not equate ownership.
Narrating or instrumentalizing a story does not transfer ownership of the story to the organization.
8. Stories are biased.
There is no unbiased story: the narrator’s point of view can only be biased.
9. Organizations bear responsibility for impact.
There’s no way to predict every outcome, but if a personal story is told to benefit an organization, the organization bears responsibility for its impact.