[Noah930]

My brother-in-law apparently just "wrote" an article in the Boston Globe. He's a university researcher, so while he writes for work (grant proposals, peer-reviewed journal articles, etc), it's not in publications intended for mass consumption. But he confessed that he didn't really write it. It was written by a ghost writer for the Globe, who had my BIL "edit" it and slap his PhD name on it. Ghostwriter is not mentioned under the headline. My BIL didn't think it was written that well (or at least not his standards), and he had a heck of a time even trying to edit it, as he had limited power to do so--which is something he didn't realize until after the article had been printed, though. He thinks the article was pushed by the corporate benefactors who supported the research.

Now, this is not any sort of political stuff. My BIL work is in the field of health/science. The article is mainly an ad for the corporate sponsor, as it doesn't seem to really push any particular position.

I thought about posting this in PARF, as it certainly has potential political extrapolations, even if this particular example is not PARFy. I'm not naive enough to think our media doesn't push certain narratives. But I've never heard of anything so blatant, as for a newspaper to effectively write an article, and then stick someone else's name on it for credibility.