The Pre-Publish Checklist: 10 Questions to Ask Before Any Content Goes Live

The checklist

Run through these before anything ships:

• If any single line were clipped and shared with no context, could it be read as an attack on a group rather than a situation?
• Does the content reference religion, caste, or community in a way that's essential to the message, or just decorative?
• Does it generalize a region, state, or language group in a way locals would find reductive?
• Does it rely on a gender or identity stereotype to land a joke or message faster?
• Does it land during or near a sensitive news cycle, election period, or anniversary?
• If it announces a cut, loss, or reduction, does it also state what continues or replaces it?
• Does it make a direct accusation against a named person or group, where a sourced fact would land just as hard?
• Has anyone outside the immediate creative team — ideally from a different regional or cultural background — reviewed it?
• Is there a specific, line-level record of what was flagged and why, or just a general "feels fine" sign-off?
• If this went viral for the wrong reason tomorrow, is there a line you'd already wish you had cut?

Make it a checkpoint, not a memory exercise

A checklist only works if it's actually run every time, which is hard to guarantee when it depends on someone remembering to do it manually under deadline pressure.

That's the gap a structured tool closes: run the script or statement through PublicSentiment's analyzer and get a controversy score with specific lines flagged against these exact categories, so question one through seven above are answered automatically and question eight through ten have something concrete to work from.