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'This American Life' Retracts Its Damning Episode About Apple And Foxconn
Last edited Fri Mar 16, 2012, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)
This American Life is retracting the episode and will have an episode this week devoted to fact-checking Daisey's reporting.
For what it's worth, I agree with Daisey that this doesn't change anything. A lot of what was in Daisey's piece was independently verified. Daisey did the same thing that so infuriates me about Michael Moore though -- he couldn't just let the facts speak for themselves, he had to embellish, turn it into "theater."
'This American Life' Retracts Its Damning Episode About Apple And Foxconn
"This American Life" has retracted its episode on Apple and Foxconn.
The episode detailed life at Foxconn and painted a damaging picture of life for employees.
It accused Foxconn of hiring 13-year-old employees and working them inhuman hours.
It was led by a performer named Mike Daisey who went to China and reported on what he found at Foxconn.
"This American Life" now says the show was "partially fabricated." It says Daisey, "misled 'This American Life' during the fact-checking process."
Full article: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-american-life-retracts-its-damning-episode-about-apple-and-foxconn-2012-3
"This American Life" has retracted its episode on Apple and Foxconn.
The episode detailed life at Foxconn and painted a damaging picture of life for employees.
It accused Foxconn of hiring 13-year-old employees and working them inhuman hours.
It was led by a performer named Mike Daisey who went to China and reported on what he found at Foxconn.
"This American Life" now says the show was "partially fabricated." It says Daisey, "misled 'This American Life' during the fact-checking process."
Full article: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-american-life-retracts-its-damning-episode-about-apple-and-foxconn-2012-3
Ira Glass: Here's Everything That Was Made Up In Our Big Apple Foxconn Story
Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.
"It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou," Marketplace’s Schmitz says in his report. "I’ve interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey’s monologue on the radio, I wondered: How’d they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could’ve met a few of them during his trip."
In Schmitz's report, he confronts Daisey and Daisey admits to fabricating these characters.
"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."
Full article: http://www.businessinsider.com/ira-glass-heres-everything-that-was-made-up-in-our-big-apple-foxconn-story-2012-3
Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.
"It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou," Marketplace’s Schmitz says in his report. "I’ve interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey’s monologue on the radio, I wondered: How’d they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could’ve met a few of them during his trip."
In Schmitz's report, he confronts Daisey and Daisey admits to fabricating these characters.
"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."
Full article: http://www.businessinsider.com/ira-glass-heres-everything-that-was-made-up-in-our-big-apple-foxconn-story-2012-3
Mike Daisey: "This American Life" has raised questions about the adaptation of AGONY/ECSTASY we created for their program. Here is my response:
I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.
What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic - not a theatrical - enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.
Source: http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html
I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.
What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic - not a theatrical - enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.
Source: http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html
An acclaimed Apple critic made up the details
What makes this a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple’s own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple.
“People like a very simple narrative,” said Adam Minter, a columnist for Bloomberg who’s spent years visiting more than 150 Chinese factories. He’s writing a book about the scrap recycling industry.
He says the reality of factory conditions in China is complicated—working at Foxconn can be grueling, but most workers will tell you they’re happy to have the job. He says Daisey’s become a media darling because he’s used an emotional performance to focus on a much simpler message:
“Foxconn bad. iPhone bad. Sign a petition. Now you’re good,” Minter says. “That’s a great simple message and it’s going to resonate with a public radio listener. It’s going to resonate with the New York Times reader. And I think that’s one of the reasons he’s had so much traction.”
Full report: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/ieconomy/acclaimed-apple-critic-made-details
What makes this a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple’s own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple.
“People like a very simple narrative,” said Adam Minter, a columnist for Bloomberg who’s spent years visiting more than 150 Chinese factories. He’s writing a book about the scrap recycling industry.
He says the reality of factory conditions in China is complicated—working at Foxconn can be grueling, but most workers will tell you they’re happy to have the job. He says Daisey’s become a media darling because he’s used an emotional performance to focus on a much simpler message:
“Foxconn bad. iPhone bad. Sign a petition. Now you’re good,” Minter says. “That’s a great simple message and it’s going to resonate with a public radio listener. It’s going to resonate with the New York Times reader. And I think that’s one of the reasons he’s had so much traction.”
Full report: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/ieconomy/acclaimed-apple-critic-made-details
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D*mn. 
