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Is Ghostwriting Ethical?
By admin | August 22, 2007
Over the past couple of weeks there have been a lot of posts showing up on writer’s blogs relating to ghostwriting ethics. The question being asked, “Is ghostwriting ethical?” I have been intrigued by the responses that I read and thought I would put the question to you my readers.
Do you think that ghostwriting is ethical?
I read numerous comments from people who felt that ghostwriting was unethical and that webmasters and particularly blog owners that use ghostwriters are lying to their readers. These people felt very strongly about having ghostwriters write blog posts. The main reason being that blogs are more personal and they felt cheated when they discovered that the blog was ghostwritten.
I think it is a fair comment but being a ghostwriter myself it is only write that I have my say. I have personally ghostwritten on a number of blogs and I don’t feel like my clients were cheating their readers. In fact everything that I would have written would have been under the direction of the client.
It is important to point out to those that are not ghostwriters that what we (ghostwriters) do is take our clients ideas and put them in writing. We do not write what we want to. WE are in fact the written words of our clients.
If you take for example celebrity biographies - do you really think that celebrities sit down and write these? No I’m afraid they don’t, it is ghostwriters that do it. They have countless interviews and brainstorming sessions with the celebrities. They write what the celebrities want them to write and once they have completed their first draft the celebrity will then read what they have written and make any changes they deem necessary. In reality you could say that it is the clients work just formatted by someone else.
I have to be honest, some of the comment that I read about ghostwriting really annoyed me. These people that commented had no idea what ghostwriters do or how hard we work. They just assumed that ghostwriting was a bad thing and left it at that. They didn’t take the time to find out exactly what it is that we do and personally I think that is sad. Why criticize something you know nothing about.
So is ghostwriting ethical?
Yes I think it is although there are some areas that I do think are unethical and that is ghostwriting term papers or essays for students. This is something that I definitely wouldn’t do no matter how much I was being offered.
What’s you opinion on the whole thing, would you write someones term paper for them?
celebrity biographies, ghostwriters, ghostwriting ethics, is ghostwriting ethical
Topics: General |
September 1st, 2007 at 4:28 am
Re: “ghost-writing” a term paper or academic essay. Let’s just say I’d “help write” the paper, meaning that I’d guide the student in preparing it. I’d also like to make sure that the student understands what “I” had written, and will work with him or her to ensure that — likely, by asking questions that he or she has to conclude from the paper.