Should you correct email sender on factual errors?

When, if ever, should you correct someone who spreads factually incorrect information to you and others on email?

Last month, The Right Thing marked its 25th anniversary of running as a column. A reader we’re calling Harris has been reading and responding to the column for more than a decade, after first discovering it when it ran in a North Carolina newspaper. Harris is an attentive reader, offering both praise and correctives when they are called for.

A few weeks ago, Harris wrote to tell me about an email-only connection he had developed with a man in his area several years ago based on their “common political outlook and interest in the news.” The man regularly forwards a lot of political cartoons and commentary to Harris.

But recently, after Harris started fact-checking some of the man’s missives, Harris found some claims in the emails to be false.

“I politely asked him not to send things to me that he hasn’t verified,” wrote Harris.

Late last month, Harris and several others on an email chain received a video from the man with a video with the sarcastic comments “Thank you, Democrats” and “Sad but true” preceding the video link.

“Regrettably, I found multiple sources that said the video wasn’t true,” wrote Harris. “Normally, I would have just ignored it, but then I received a 'reply-all' email from one of the other recipients saying, 'well, damn this is scary as hell.'”

Harris finds it unfortunate that the man shows the email addresses of all the recipients, none of whom Harris knows.

Harris asks if he should email the responder to “ease her pain,” email all the recipients and the man to set the record straight, email only the man to suggest he send a correction, or just mind his own business.

“I’m inclined towards the latter,” wrote Harris, in part because after he learned the man’s wife had died recently, he had called him for the first time to offer his condolences and suggest they might meet for lunch “when he gets his life back in order.”

“I believe in ‘truth, justice, and the American way,’” wrote Harris, “but it gets complicated when feelings are involved.”

While Harris is showing grace by not wanting to criticize the man for spreading an error-filled email, that alone should not be enough to stop him from emailing him to let him know the facts in his recent email were wrong.

Harris had already asked the man not to share un-fact-checked forwards with him. And while the man was grieving, that grief did not stop him from sending the email. If Harris believes it’s important to let him know the facts in the email were wrong, the right thing is to email him to let him know.

Were it me, I would email the man directly and let him decide whether to send a corrective to the entire list. Harris might also take that moment to ask the man if he could blind copy his recipients rather than have all their email addresses visible on the emails he spreads.

He could also remind him he’d prefer to be taken off the list of emails that aren’t fact-checked.

If he’s still up for an in-person lunch, he can lead with that – all the more reason to email him alone and not all those on the email string unless he’s looking for a bigger crowd at the lunch table.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

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