Book Author-Writer Relationship and Responsibilites Part 2

In this, the second part of a series on Book Author-Writer Responsibilities and Obligations, I want to discuss the accusations made by Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post about content in “Decision Points”, a memoir by former president George Bush being plagiarized from newspaper and magazine articles as well as from previously published memoirs and non-fiction books. According to Grim and other write up’s on the ‘Net, Bush collaborated with his former speech writer and Yale graduate Christopher Michel to write the book. For the purpose of this article we are going to question the ethical obligations and moral responsibilities of both Bush and Michel. Did both parties neglected their responsibilities on this project? Bush, as the author of the book, is ultimately responsible for every word in the book. The author is the subject expert, and as this book is a memoir, the content should have been pulled from his memory, his experiences and any viewpoints. It was his job to present the general content for the book to Michel. Michel should have taken the content and shaped it into a well-written, interesting, truthful, digestible read.  Where memory was fuzzy, research would have been conducted to present factual representations …Read the Rest