A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, or reports which are officially credited to another person (Wikipedia). Another way to look at ghostwriting is professional plagiarism who is influenced by money and legally sells his skills and ideas to another person. The speaker on Wednesday prose a good question, Whether ghostwriting was ethical or not? And would you ghostwrite for someone else?
I believe that ghostwriting is ethical, and if there was a job opening I would take it. Ghostwriters help articulate a person's ideas and thoughts because that person is incapable or unable to. For example, if a foreign woman needed her medication but could not because she could not write in English, and someone wrote her needs for her then ghostwriting would be doing a good thing. Then a counter example, if a woman who is on crack and dropped out of high school because she lack motivation could not write her medication and someone wrote her needs for her then ghostwriting would be doing a bad thing. There are more example of controversial topics: gun control, atomic bomb, abortion, and etc. These subject (things) aren't at fault but the people who uses these elements are, because each of these elements can be use for good and bad.
Ghostwriting is in essence same as writing, sharing Barthes idea that writing is a neutral element, and then extend that idea to ghostwriting. I think if there were to be any controversy of ghostwriting it should be the intent of that person hiring the ghostwriter and how he/she will use the ghostwriter. Therefore the people hiring the ghostwriter is liable for what the ghostwriter writes because ultimate the employer will be using the text.
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2 comments:
I think you raise some interesting points here and take a stance on ghostwritting that differs from many people in the class. What you say about ghostwritting being a profession is true though. People are paid to ghostwrite. Just because some people may see this profession as unetheical doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't exist. In essence there are many professions out their that people deem unethical, but they exist nonetheless.
I would tend yo agree with you for the most part. I would totally take a job if someone paid me to write something for them (of course later in life, not for a class). There are boundaries, but the lines are thin. I would be sure to take things from a moral standpoint.
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