My former employer, the San Jose Mercury News, recently ran an opinion column that illustrated several regrettable elements of modern opinion journalism. The piece, under the names of two former members of Congress, accused online video service Netflix of getting an unfair subsidy. It further urged pricing schemes that would, in effect, force Netflix to pay broadband providers more to provide programming to customers.

The op-ed column was a standard public relations tactic. Under the names John Sununu and Harold Ford, former politicians turned corporate mouthpieces, it urged a specific public policy for an organisation largely funded by – you guessed it – the broadband companies. The logic of the column was laughable, and easily refuted.

Unfortunately, newspapers often don't check to see if their op-ed contributors are shading the truth or lying outright. The evidence is clear that some editorial page editors don't believe it's their responsibility to vet for accuracy and truth what they publish, unless the material comes from their own staff – and, of course, even that doesn't guarantee veracity.

Sununu and Ford's bylines reflected a separate failing of modern media, one that is barely on the radar of most news organisations. I'm referring to bylined opinion pieces that are quite obviously not written by the supposed authors. Op-ed pieces that run under the bylines of famous politicians, celebrities and business people are almost never written by those people, just as they rarely author their autobiographies. They don't have time. Their staffers and PR people, or paid ghostwriters in the case of books, do the research and writing for them.

Sometimes, the "author" is blindsided by what he or she "wrote". This can have hilarious results, as in the case of retired basketball star Charles Barkley. Upon the publication of his autobiography, which contained some controversial observations, he complained that he'd been misquoted. Then again, he hadn't actually read it, let alone written it.

Society has a blind spot about this practice – and applies a double standard. If we catch a student paying someone to write his or her paper for a class, or even if the actual writer does it for free, we give the student a failing grade. Or, in some cases (such as in a journalism school), we might well invite the student (and perhaps the collaborator, too, if it's another student) to quit altogether.

One school of thought says ghostwritten op-eds are a lot like speechwriter-written speeches. Since we all know that most famous people don't write all their own lines for speeches, goes this defence of the practice, we should assume the same with a byline – whether on a book or an op-ed. It's a tempting analogy, but wrong in a key way: a false byline is an outright, direct lie. And news organisations that run these pieces are encouraging dishonesty, which they compound, albeit with good motives, by helpfully editing often turgid prose to make it more compelling.

The Guardian ensures that purported authors at least read and approve of what goes out under their names. The Washington Post says its policy is that op-eds be written by the bylined person – though it cuts some slack for powerful politicians with speechwriters, in part because sometimes those ghostwritten pieces make news. (No one will ever convince me that Sarah Palin wrote this Post op-ed column, though it's possible that she read the falsehood-ridden piece before it was published.)

I wish I could persuade editors that they are contributing, albeit in a relatively small way, to public cynicism about the media by allowing this sleight of hand to persist. And if I was running a news organisation, I wouldn't run such pieces, period. If I'd flunk a student for doing it, why should I give a pass to the rich and powerful?