

Mike Daisey responds - ryandvm
http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/reports-of-my-death-have-been-greatly.html

======
JumpCrisscross
_"I apologized in this week’s episode to anyone who felt betrayed. I stand by
that apology. But understand that if you felt something that connected you
with where your devices come from—that is not a lie. That is art."_

I have problems with someone re-iterating the sincerity of their apology
followed by "but". Standing by an apology means not machine-gunning it with
caveats seconds later.

 _"I told Ira that story should always be subordinate to the truth, and I
still believe that. Sometimes I fall short of that goal, but I will never stop
trying to achieve it."_

The indignation in this statement is toxic. Dishonesty - fabricating facts and
then dissembling to cover it up - is not an oopsie that we try and avoid.
Trust is a cornerstone of civilization and more so for anyone in a journalist-
activist function. Having a position doesn't entitle you to make up facts.
Having an audience that should fact-check aggressively doesn't mean you get to
actively challenge this faculty.

You assumed we, the audience, were too dumb to get the meaning from the actual
facts and so juiced it up in accordance with how much brighter than us you
_know_ yourself to be. Now you're playing the victim.

You asked people to open their eyes and think critically. Sorry we didn't stay
on the hamster wheel as we were supposed to.

~~~
kenrikm
After lieing the way he did he finishes by talking about honesty? Seriously? I
wonder how much he made off of this whole debacle, I doubt that he did it for
free out of the kindness of his heart and to bring these "terrible things to
light". I have the same issue with Michael Moore and "Sicko" what he showed
about the Cuban healthcare system was a lie/fabrication I know because my wife
lived there until 2005 when she was granted her American residency. Always
look for the agenda before you believe something like this, trust but verify.

------
billybob
One of the unfortunate aspects of this episode is that, as Daisey says, the
problems he discusses are mostly real. __He didn't have to lie __.

For example, he could have talked about the N-Hexane poisoning without lying.
He could have cited news reports, or traveled to interview people, or done it
over the phone, or even gotten the info from secondhand interviews. He could
have said "imagine a man who..." and proceeded to paint a painful picture
based on the facts that were already public.

But he didn't. He chose to pretend he had met these people. He would say that
made the story more emotionally impactful, and maybe that's true. But it also
poisoned it. It was a very condescending move to pull on his audiences; there
is neither artistic nor factual integrity in it.

If he had stuck to the facts, he would still have had a great performance. Too
bad.

~~~
georgieporgie
I felt the same. Having listened to yesterday's This American Life retracting
the prior show, it seemed that he completely fabricated the story of the 12
and 13 year-olds. Even according to his story, which doesn't make sense, he
met an English-speaking 13 year old and simply _assumed_ that her friend was
12.

Everything else appeared to be merely stretching the truth, retelling factual
events as if they were witnessed first hand, and other things for which I'd be
willing to grant some artistic license, provided it were told with a
disclaimer.

~~~
tablescraps
He _said_ he met a 13 y/o but the translator said he didn't.

I can't believe that he met a 13 y/o factory worker who spoken English.

I wish people would stop excusing his bullshit. This goes way beyond
'stretching'.

~~~
georgieporgie
Uh. I think I clearly delineated between what seems to be a blatant lie
(meeting a 12 year old) versus artistic license or stretching the truth, which
is what much of the rest of it was.

If you listen to the latest TAL you'll hear what I mean. It's _conceivable_
(though very unlikely) that he met a 13 year old -- while the interpreter was
distracted -- who spoke enough English to say she was 13. However, when Ira
asks him directly whether the supposed 13 year old said her friend was 12, or
if he just assumed (i.e. fabricated) that she was, he has no answer. It's the
one place where he has absolutely nowhere to go: he can't claim artistic
license with retelling of factual news reports, and he can't claim the
interpreter simply wasn't listening at the time, he simply talked himself into
a corner.

------
mattdeboard
News flash bud, when you lie to your audience you lose all credibility. This
isn't new. "I didn't lie MUCH! There is some truth in there!" is great but
your brand has been tarnished in a major way. The fact that you're sitting
there acting like Ira Glass is the asshole for drawing attention to the fact
you put his reputation on the line -- NPR's reputation -- that you lied to
millions of people, tells me you live in a fantasy world.

Hope this dude goes down in flames forever. No character trait I hate more in
the world than people who have convinced themselves that it's ok to lie.

~~~
skilesare
Your first stament is wrong. Theater requires you lie to your audience. For
example, there are two movies coming out about Abraham Lincoln this year:

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443272/> <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1611224/>

Clearly one of these is an outright fabrication of the events of Lincoln's
life.

In the other Steven Spielberg is going to produce a film that is 100%
fabricated and yet people are going to gush about the truth of Abe Lincoln
that it captures. The sets will be fake. Most of the dialogue will be made up
and dramaticized. No one will question this. No one will care.

Mike's issue was that he wanted to do more and he shouldn't have. He should
have stayed off of NPR, out of print, and off the talk shows.

I still think that his show is closer to "Lincoln: The sixteenth President of
the United States guides the North to victory during the Civil War" than
"Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the
United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States.
He makes it his mission to eliminate them."

------
DanBC
> _He’s a storyteller within the context of radio journalism, and I am a
> storyteller in the theater._

This comment is pretty offensive. Journalists do tell stories, but they make
sure those stories are true, verified, factual.

> _Given the tenor of the condemnation, you would think I had concocted an
> elaborate, fanciful universe filled with furnaces in which babies are burned
> to make iPhone components, or that I never went to China, never stood
> outside the gates of Foxconn, never pretended to be a businessman to get
> inside of factories, never spoke to any workers._

But now people will assume that the facts about abusive conditions at
developing nation factories (not just China) are created by people like
Daisey; that they're on a par with 'babies burning to make iPhones'.

Using babies to make his point is particularly unfortunate because there are
suspicions that some factories force women to have abortions. Obviously
abortion is so political and polarised it's impossible to find any credible
data. Most people agree that forced abortions (whether from the state but
especially from employers) are not acceptable. Here's one newspaper article,
which doesn't mention factories.

([http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/women-
forced-...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/women-forced-abort-
under-chinas-one-child-policy/))

In general, life for poor people in China sucks. That doesn't mean we should
accept abuse in factories to produce luxury goods for rich people.

~~~
InclinedPlane
_"Journalists do tell stories, but they make sure those stories are true,
verified, factual."_

Some of them do. Sadly, it's somewhat of a dying art. The retraction episode
of This American Life might be the apex of such activity in traditional
journalism for all we know. Most other news outlets fall far short of that
standard.

~~~
knowtheory
So, I'm a software developer that joined an investigative journalism non-
profit 6 months ago.

There is awesome investigative journalism going on. We even hold two
conferences a year about it, one focused on investigative stuff specifically
(<http://ire.org/conferences/ire-2012/> ), and one focusing on news technology
(<http://ire.org/conferences/nicar-2012/> ).

I certainly can't claim that investigative reporting (or any reporting really)
is doing as well as it has in the past, given the massive attrition in the
news industry, but there are a lot of reporters out there who are fighting the
good fight.

We even put out a newsletter of investigative stories:
<http://ire.org/blog/extra-extra/>

Edit: don't forget ProPublica's awesome #muckreads blog
(<http://projects.propublica.org/muckreads/> ).

------
jd
This is a really well written response by Mike, but frankly I'm not convinced.
Not in the least. And to accuse Ira Glass of unfair editing (with the dead
silences and all) really takes the cake. I think Ira gave Mike every
opportunity to come clean, and he didn't. Only when directly confronted with
facts contrary to the story did he shift his position, and then only so
slightly as to keep his main story intact.

As far as I can tell Mike is only sorry he got caught.

------
wmeredith
This is well stated, but it's the same old "the end justifies the means"
reasoning that's long been a comfort to many liars, cheats and thieves.

Yes, Chinese labor sucks compared to a fat American lifestyle, but hyperbole
and outright fabrication has now trivialized that issue. A good reporter does
not insert themselves into the story if they're serious about the subject
matter.

------
brudgers
What is fundamentally flawed with the state of journalism is not what Mike
Daisey does. He's an actor who created a one man show.

What is flawed is that journalists continue to mistake his one man show for
investigative reporting. The extent to which it is occurring borders on the
deliberate.

Rob Schmitz's investigation is the journalistic equivalent to revealing that
Julius Caesar could not have said:

    
    
      Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
      To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say,
      The barren, touched in this holy chase,
      Shake off their sterile curse.
    

because he did not speak Elizabethan English.

Schmitz should be able to distinguish between a news report and entertainment.
He should be able to provide context for the large themes in Daisey's
performance given that they coincide with his own journalistic reports for
Marketplace. He could have done actual journalism, instead he conflated
theater with journalism and then revealed it as theater while pretending to
conduct journalism.

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/apple-
economy/app...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/apple-
economy/app..).

[http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/apple-
economy/china-c...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/apple-
economy/china-c..).

Ira Glass from the transcript of the original This American Life piece:

    
    
      When I saw Mike Daisey perform this story on stage,
      when I left the theater I had a lot of questions.
      I mean, he's not a reporter, and I wondered,
      did he get it right?
    

The journalistic failings fall on journalists. Mr. Glass knew Daisey wasn't a
reporter all along.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/454/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/454/t..).

------
rumblestrut
I saw this tweet yesterday after listening to the TAL program. He says his
work should be treated differently because it's theater, and yet the program
notes seen here state:

"THIS IS A WORK OF NONFICTION."

[https://twitter.com/#!/afgld/status/181439210643931136/photo...](https://twitter.com/#!/afgld/status/181439210643931136/photo/1)

Daisey doesn't understand that, "I'm sorry. I lied. Please forgive me," would
have went a lot further than what he's doing now.

------
cafard
"... and finishing the episode with audio pulled out of context from my
performance was masterful."

As apologies go, a raised middle finger on the way out the door would convey
the same sentiment less disingenously.

------
Terretta
My monologue was a fabrication, but they _edited_ me!

------
skilesare
Was Jean Valjean really at the barricade?

I've been following Mike Daisey for a few years. He's really good at what he
does and he's really open with his fan base. You can find a number of his
monologues here: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mike-
daisey/id2085588?mt=1...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mike-
daisey/id2085588?mt=11) (I particularly liked the Nicola Tesla Monologue)

Notice that he has one called 'All Stories Are Fiction'.

I think Mike got caught up in a multi-media world when he's a one media kind
of guy. That media is theater. It is a world where people pay lots of money to
watch other people try as hard as they can to convince the viewers that they
are in the streets of Paris and there is a might battle being waged. In the
end the audience feels something. And that is the goal.

The problem is that Mike let this 'feel something' get ahead of the burden
that the programs he was appearing on are under.

If Mike Daisey comes to your town and you don't go because of this, you're
being petty and missing a great show.

That being so, he should get away from journalism because people that produce
that content have no room for theater.*

*of course there is fox news.

~~~
eropple
> If Mike Daisey comes to your town and you don't go because of this, you're
> being petty

"If you don't give money to someone because of their past of intellectual
dishonesty, you're being petty" doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

~~~
skilesare
That is the whole point. He was not attempting to be intellectually honest.
There is no room for intellect in the theater. If you walk into Les Mis and
use your intellect, the second you see that turntable in a prison camp you're
going to yell, 'thats bulls __*' and storm out.

I should have said if you don't go hear someone tell a story because of their
past storytelling, you're being petty.

~~~
tablescraps
He wrote an op-ed at the NYT. You can't seriously claim he was just telling a
story and should be allowed flexibility with the truth.

~~~
skilesare
He shouldn't have done that. His show belongs in the theater. It is a great
piece of theater that pushes people to think about where their crap comes
from. The things he talks about happened and do exist as themes in
globalization.

I think he got caught up in the fact that he started having an effect(and one
that was needed) and didn't know how to operate in that environment.

~~~
tablescraps
Should he have been on MSNBC or any of the talk shows he has been on in the
past 2 months?

Please stop making excuses for this piece of shit.

~~~
skilesare
He should not have been on those shows unless he was talking about his play.

~~~
eropple
OK, so now remind me why I'm "being petty" if I don't give him money because
of this.

------
timr
_"Especially galling is how many are gleefully eager to dance on my grave
expressly so they can return to ignoring everything about the circumstances
under which their devices are made. Given the tone, you would think I had
fabulated an elaborate hoax, filled with astonishing horrors that no one had
ever seen before."_

I think that's a really important, fair point. Whatever this guy lied about
with regard to his personal experiences in China, those things are minor
compared to the _truth_ of the situation. I really wish he hadn't done that.
He didn't need to lie -- the story is so fundamentally awful that it stands
without the minor things he fabricated. But now people are dismissing the
whole message.

The dramatic indignation in the other comments in this thread is predictable,
unenlightening, and unhelpful -- far more heat than light. The most dangerous
thing about this controversy is that people will take knee-jerk reactions to
Daisey as an indication that nothing is wrong with the world of electronics.
And that's a tragedy, in the most traditional sense of the word.

~~~
bradleyland
Therein lies the great irony. By partaking in intellectual dishonesty, Mike
Daisey has created an unnecessary sideshow that is stealing away the spotlight
from the real issue.

I'm bothered, in part, by the fact that Apple is the target in all these
attacks. There are some very large questions on the table here, and Apple is
but one player. Arguably, they're putting the most effort in to trying to
improve. Where's the outrage for Samsung? For HTC? For Dell?

How about western consumers? Even those of us who are aware of the issues, yet
somehow find a way to resolve spending $499 on our latest 9.7 inches of retina
exploitation? Even further, what happens to the world economy without
$300/month labor by the millions?

I guess a narrative needs a villain. I just hope that everyone maintains some
sense of perspective. We're not talking about the practices of one corporation
here. We're talking about a major component of consumerist culture. That's the
conversation, and it's being ignored at every turn.

~~~
timr
Absolutely agreed. Daisey lied about some relatively minor stuff (in the big
picture), so the attack is against Mike Daisey.

The straw man is dead. Long live the straw man.

------
goatforce5
"There is nothing in this controversy that contests the facts in my work about
the nature of Chinese manufacturing."

Nice bit of misdirection there.

------
simonh
<satire> It wasn't the truth, but hey at least it was truthy.

That's enough nowadays, isn't it?</satire>

------
olalonde
I haven't really followed this whole story, but I live a few blocks away from
Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen and I know a few people who work there. I'd be
willing to do some light investigative work in my free time for the HN
community if there's interest.

------
regnum
"Felt betrayed" should be changed to "was betrayed", then it would be a true
apology. Otherwise, it is just a sort of blaming the victim.

------
mmuro
Standing behind the lie is easier than admitting the truth.

Dude got caught. The Dateline piece confirmed your untruths. Man up!

------
jonstjohn
What I found interesting in the This American Life episode over the weekend is
that Mike Daisey claimed that the reason why he didn't retract his story
before is that he was afraid that it would undo all the 'good it had done' in
spreading 'the truth'. At the same time, he suggested that it was he felt it
was his best work yet. I suspect that he really feared the disintegration of
'his best work' when the lies were uncovered, and his supposed fear of un-
doing the 'good' his story has done was really just another layer of
justification. There are certain personality types that will justify anything
questionable that they do - and those justifications are often complex with
many layers.

------
mcantelon
The popularization of PR-speak in North America is unfortunate.

------
rgrieselhuber
Jesus. How did this guy ever get a job as a radio journalist?

~~~
iamwil
I think he claims to be a performer that "weaves autobiography, gonzo
journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking
stories"

It's convenient, I suppose. When his journalism falls short, he calls himself
a performer. When his stories are incredulous, he calls himself a journalist.

------
trustfundbaby
tldr: I lied, but what I lied about is actually true, so there ... btw I'm
kinda sorry I lied.

what a guy.

------
Joeri
I assumed everyone understood that the monologue was part fabrication. It fit
together so well that it couldn't have happened as it was told. Frankly i'm
surprised at the outrage. I thought it was masterful storytelling that pointed
out a genuine problem. I don't care if it's not 100% factual.

~~~
dbecker
The story wasn't just "not 100% factual," it was substantively misleading.

For example: A huge part of the story was about 12 and 13 year old kids that
Daisy met at the factory gates. He says he saw lots of them, and he suggests
that this is the norm. Other reports suggest this is very rare.

The story isn't true using the conventional definition of true... and it isn't
true even using Daisy's theatrical definition of true.

