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Subject:Re: Who cares about ethics? From:kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 11 Apr 2003 08:38:11 -0600
Dawn writes:
> How do you feel about the following statement:
>
> "Most professional technical communicators largely ignore the subject of
> ethics, despite regular articles in the STC?s Intercom magazine, believing
> ethics to be largely irrelevant to their professional development."
May I ask what your point is? Is this what YOU believe? Or is this a
statement you encountered somewhere, which you want to attack? You've
given us no context.
The wording of the statement is a bit inflammatory, easily leading to the
oversimplified conclusion that most professional technical communicators
are unethical. If that is the hypothesis, I strongly disagree.
If, however, the statement is meant to suggest that the issue of ethics
seldom arises in the day-to-day life of most professional technical
communicators, there I'd be inclined to agree. I think we're an ethical
crew, for the most part, and seldom are put into any ethical dilemmas
during the course of the work day (at least in my experience).
Any adult holding down a job is expected to know right from wrong. I don't
think there's anything about the tech writing profession that would make
its practitioners inherently more or less ethical than any other
profession (other than perhaps airport baggage handlers, who rank
particularly low in that regard, at least from my point of view).
And, as others have pointed out, I fail to see the relevance of the
mention of the STC in this statement, unless this statement is culled from
(or intended for) an STC publication. I'm not disparaging the STC; I just
don't think it's relevant to your statement as presented in the current
context (or lack thereof).
So again, I ask: what's the point of this?
Keith Cronin
Ethics, schmethics.
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