CONSUMER REPORTS
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT GUIDELINES
Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan organization that proudly supports the right of all people to freely—and respectfully—exchange ideas about important issues affecting consumers. We aim for every participant to feel welcome in each of the dialogue and learning experiences we create.
CR has adopted these engagement guidelines to help ensure that our events are safe spaces that reflect our values of equity, inclusion, and fairness for all consumers. They describe the behavior we expect from all who participate in our community engagements with people inside and outside of CR, such as presentations and panel discussions.
Creating inclusive and respectful forums also means addressing harmful, abusive, and harassing behavior directed at our colleagues, partners, fellows, and other participants. When these things happen, we reserve the right to take action, such as removing inappropriate comments, blocking a user from our social media platforms, or reporting the incident to the right resource.
Expected Behavior
When participating in a Consumer Reports event, each participant is expected to:
- Assume good intent of all attendees, volunteers, speakers, and staffers.
- Be respectful of participants who might not have your perspectives and experiences.
- Make it safe for others to disagree respectfully, in the spirit of constructive dialogue and informative exchange of ideas. Examples of how to do this include saying: “A thought that comes up for me is …”. “What I’m curious about is …”. "An alternative view I would offer for consideration is …”.
- Seek to understand and learn from the various perspectives shared. Demonstrate openness and curiosity. Ask questions when you are not certain.
- Do not make personal or political comments that are based on a person’s gender, language, ethnicity, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical or mental ability, nationality, or any other aspect of the person’s identity. This includes comments based on people’s appearance, speaking manner, or other characteristics.
- Support each other to promote collective respect, well-being, and growth.
Unacceptable Behavior
Behavior such as bullying, harassment, intimidation, and aggression will not be tolerated at CR events or engagements. Examples of unacceptable behavior include:
- Derogatory language that implicitly or explicitly targets a person or identity, such as: “Where are you ‘really’ from?”. Saying you can’t understand a speaker because of their accent. Deliberately using the wrong pronoun to refer to an individual. Using sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, or ableist language, or any language that insults or demeans the characteristics of a person.
- Aggressive or demeaning expressions directed at staff members, speakers, or others.
- Sustained disruption during events or presentations.
- Bullying, including repeated or persistent verbal abuse, or nonverbal or physical conduct of a threatening, intimidating, or humiliating nature.
Other examples of unacceptable behavior include the use of the Consumer Reports name or community to solicit or promote personal business interests.
Enforcing the Code of Conduct
Consumer Reports reserves the right to remove, hide, or delete any language that is contrary to or inconsistent with these engagement guidelines. We also reserve the right to moderate or limit access to participants engaging in such conduct.
If you witness or experience unacceptable behavior at any point, please email community@cr.consumer.org.
