July 12, 2025
Participation Supplement Two
Last class we talked about the issue of “When is it appropriate to lie?”. We had a lengthy discussion about the topic with a seemingly agreeable consensus that it is alright to lie (or at least bend the truth) as long as you “Don’t mention it” or you “change the narrative”, I disagree with this from a technical communication standpoint. It’s one thing to change your response if you’re asked “Does this dress make me look fat?”, but when you are constructing professional emails, statement of purposes, flyers, press releases, etc., it is never okay to lie. Sure, people do lie in these types of writings and they do get away with it and they are maybe even successful, but that is a risk that they chose to take. The problem is, even if you don’t bring up a subject or change the wording or narrative to only tell a partial truth / half lie, that if someone discovers this discrepancy, your credibility and trustworthiness will be questioned by all those who work with you. There are many cases where people in certain branches of the government have not spoken about things or tried to avoid speaking about them and they have had to go before Congress and answer for their actions, which usually results in them looking unfavorably. The same is true with using misleading titles or telling only part of the story. I am also well aware of how rampant this is in the political arena, somewhere I saw a collection of articles about certain events or occurrences, but depending on the political affiliation of the person writing about it, the reader would get a completely different idea of what actually happened and who they should favor in the situation. It makes sense because these people are politically biased and they want their readers / listeners to get behind their cause, and it is one thing to give your opinion even if it is biased, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you still should not leave out important information or tell only part of the story. People should be given all the details so they can make their own decisions.