
This American Life Retracting "Mr. Daisey & The Apple Factory" - tptacek
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
======
sequoia
While reading Daisey's response[1], something jumped out at me: as a defense
for "embellishing the truth" he says: "What I do is not journalism. The tools
of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism."

Why does that defense (from a disgraced journalist) sound familiar? Oh yeah,
David Pogue, when faced with serious charges of conflict of interest: "I am
not a reporter. I’ve been an opinion columnist my entire career...I try to
entertain and inform."

And where did I read that? The Atlantic Wire piece[2] on Dave Pogue. And how
did I find that piece? Oh yeah, Mike Daisey linked to it from his
indictment[3] of David Pogue on his blog.

Summary: Daisey endorses a critique of Pogue that calls the defense of "I'm
not a journalist" ridiculous, then Daisey invokes the exact same (pitiful)
defense. Yechh...

For the record I _support_ Daisey's crusade and think Pogue is a fool on this
issue, but it's really irritating to find out that the highest profile critic
of Apple labor conditions is both a liar and a Class-A Hypocrite. Now those
who want to dismiss critiques of gadget-makers' labor practices have a _great_
new reason to do just that. The campaign to improve working conditions for
gadget makers would be better off if Daisey had stayed out of it completely;
his contribution was (imo) a net setback.

[1] <http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html> [2]
[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/05/david-
pogue-...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/05/david-pogue-nicki-
dugan-pr-dan-lyons/38250/) [3] [http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/02/david-
pogue-is-only-c...](http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/02/david-pogue-is-
only-competent-to-review.html)

~~~
timr
Yeah, but...Daisey really _isn't_ a journalist. He's a playwright and an
author. He does one-man shows off Broadway. As far as I know, he's never had
any training in journalism, nor has he worked as a reporter.

This is a case where I suspect that both parties were mis-interpreting the
intent of the other party; This American Life does a _lot_ of "artistic" work
(e.g. nearly everything by David Sedaris, or David Rakoff), and perhaps Daisey
felt that he fit into that model. Likewise, TAL seems to have felt that Daisey
was venturing into journalism, even though he's clearly an amateur at it (they
make skeptical statements to this effect in the original piece).

That said, I think there's a bright-line distinction between "art" and
"fabrication" -- when you present your work as a documentary without
disclosing it as a work of fiction -- that Daisey seems to have crossed.

~~~
sequoia
The point is that the argument is totally specious. It's built upon the
premise that only journalists are held to any standard of honesty or factual
integrity. Can you cheat on your wife and say "well to be fair, I'm not a
journalist!"?

The question isn't "is he a journalist or isn't he" it's "did he lie and
intentionally mislead" and the answer is "yes;" his chosen profession has no
bearing on this fact.

What really chaps my butt is that he could have told this _whole_ narrative
without lying. To wit: clearly present it as a work of fiction, _based on_
fact, and thoroughly footnote the whole thing to real sources. Awareness
raised, emotional connection with consumers made, _integrity still intact_.
This is essentially what he did (the issues he cites are real), he just lied
about it and said they were his personal experiences, presumably to sell more
tickets and get some insta-gravitas.

~~~
timr
_"The point is that the argument is totally specious. It's built upon the
premise that only journalists are held to any standard of honesty or factual
integrity. Can you cheat on your wife and say 'well to be fair, I'm not a
journalist!'?"_

Oh, come now. You're assuming something critical: that Daisey went into the
project representing his work as factual. If he walked into WBEZ and said
_"hey Ira, this segment is a dramatization of what I encountered in China, but
I'm not a journalist, and I don't know all the rules"_ , and the staff ignored
that statement, or neglected to fact-check completely, then Daisey has a
legitimate defense.

Likewise, if I create a radio show that sounds like an NPR news program, but
is actually a fictional simuation of an NPR news program, full of falsehoods
and distortions of the truth, am I lying? Technically, yes. But I don't think
anyone would hold me to an ethical standard that requires absolute truth in a
work of art. And perhaps that's what was going on here (that's certainly
Daisey's defense.)

As I said before, I _doubt_ that this is true -- it certainly seems as if
Daisey crossed an ethical line with all of his appearances on news programs
and whatnot. But there's wiggle room here. There's room for someone else to be
wrong.

------
Jun8
From a naive viewpoint: Why is all this reporting about factory conditions
focus on Apple, i.e. Foxconn? Is there proof that factories operated by
Foxconn are worse than the typical Chinese factory? Or is Apple pushing them
to Draconian measures, e.g. guards with guns, child workers, etc.?

How's this any different from any other Made in China electronics product?

EDIT: The replies are aligned with what I was thinking: If anything, Foxcon is
above average in factory conditions. The major reason for the Apple focus is
because of its high visibility.

I despise this easy targetism! I felt the same while watching _Supersize Me_ ,
which focused on McDonalds, and some of Michael Moore's films. The basic
premise may be correct, but selecting targets to ride on their name
(McDonalds, Walmart, Apple) is an easy tactic and in fact puts off the
critical thinking people who resist the manipulation (well, at least it puts
me off). And what's more, in most of these cases the (more naive) audience is
led to believe that the situation is _this specific company's fault_ , leading
to behavior like "Man, I'm never gonna eat another BigMac, will go to Burger
King instead".

~~~
tptacek
It's not. A generous interpretation: nobody thinks about the branding on their
Samsung phone or their LG television, but people feel a personal connection to
Apple's brand (or, alternatively, are hit over the head with it every day). So
if you're optimizing your story for relevance to a US audience (a perfectly
valid thing to do, if you stay within the bounds of the truth), you naturally
focus in on Apple.

~~~
_delirium
I think it's demographics-related as well; Apple owners are more likely to be
vaguely left-ish, interested in sustainability and fair trade, etc., than a
typical Dell owner is. Same reason imo that Starbucks has more image problems
with coffee sourcing than Dunkin Donuts does, because Starbucks customers as a
demographic care more about things like coffee sourcing, or at least are more
sensitive to hearing complaints about it.

------
tptacek
I'm a Chicago Public Radio member and just got this in my email. Wow:

 _I’m writing to tell you that tonight, This American Life and Marketplace
will reveal that a story that we broadcast on This American Life this past
January contained significant fabrications._

 _We’re retracting that story because we can’t vouch for its truth, and this
weekend's episode of our show will detail the errors in the story, which was
an excerpt of Mike Daisey's acclaimed one-man show, "The Agony and the Ecstasy
of Steve Jobs." In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn
that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen, China. He's performed the
monologue in theaters around the country; it's currently at the Public Theater
in New York._

 _When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life,
Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. He
located and interviewed Daisey's Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by
the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what
Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said
on the radio._

 _During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey's story, I and This
American Life producer Brian Reed asked Daisey for this interpreter's contact
information, so we could confirm with her that Daisey actually witnessed what
he claims. Daisey told us her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his
monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn't work
any more. He said he had no way to reach her._

 _At that point, we should've killed the story. But other things Daisey told
us about Apple's operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to
doubt him. We didn't think that he was lying to us. That was a mistake._

 _Schmitz does a 20-minute story on our show this weekend about his findings,
and we'll also broadcast an interview I did with Daisey. Marketplace will
feature a shorter version of Schmitz's report earlier in the evening. You can
read more details on our website, and listen to our show on WBEZ at 7 p.m.
tonight, and noon tomorrow._

 _We've been planning a live presentation of Daisey's monologue on stage at
the Chicago Theatre on April 7th, with me leading a Q &A afterwards. Maybe
you've heard me advertising it on the air. That show will be cancelled and all
tickets will be refunded._

 _I've never had to write an email like this. Like all our friends and
colleagues in public radio, I and my co-workers at This American Life work
hard every day to make sure that what you hear on WBEZ is factually correct.
We will continue to do that, and hope you can forgive this._

~~~
tptacek
Daisey responds: "It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license
to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity".

Calling to mind Jack Shafer (now at Reuters, formally Slate's media critic) on
the problematic nature of narrative journalism:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/03/14/dismantling-t...](http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/03/14/dismantling-
the-capote-myth/)

~~~
pron
Up until very recently, I was a long-form narrative non-fiction feature (:))
writer at a very prominent Israeli magazine; I'd like to share a bit of my
experience and respond to the remark about "the problematic nature of narraive
jounalism".

I have always considered Truman Capote, Tom Wolf, Terry Southern and their ilk
my heroes and sources of inspiration, even though I have been well aware of
their use of composite characters and other "embellishments" that are frowned
upon in modern magazines and newspapers. While I have never created a
composite character myself, a couple of times I did describe a composite
scene: say I had spent a week with my subjects and one night one of the
characters made a remark at dinner, and the next night someone else said
something else during dinner, I chose to recount those two events as taking
place the same night during the same meal. I made that decision (which I'd
discussed with my editor) becaue either the two events occured on two
different nights randomly, and could have just as easily taken place on the
same night, and I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the story or the
reader's image of the scene, or, they may have been a good reason for these
two events to have occured separately, but that reason was complicated, and
explaining it would have detracted from the story. Did I do a disservice to
the truth? I don't think so. Here's why.

To explain it in terms familiar to the readers of this forum, journalism is a
"reverse problem". The journalist's job is not listing facts, but extracting a
model of the truth from a sample set of observation data. This is a very
difficult problem. In contrast to what many critics think, a good journalists
must not only stick to "the facts", because the facts are simply a biased
sampling of reality. Sticking to the facts is just like connecting sample
points with lines - it's called overfitting and it's as gross a mishandling of
the truth as negligent interpolation or extrapolation is. Neither sticking to
facts nor "completing" them is "the truth". A good journalist is one who is
able to recreate a good model of reality, a fine approximation of it, by
relying on observed facts as well as on gut instinct and genuine emotion, and
who's able to convey the model as clearly as possible to his audience,
introducing neither outright fabrications nor irrelevant and confusing facts.

~~~
daguar
There's a big difference between the (apt) metaphor of a model you describe
and this case.

To extend your model, you're conflating direct data collection/experimentation
with literature assessment, and essentially saying that's acceptable. It's
not.

A journalist interviewing an expert (academic, or other specialist) is
analogous to the literature review in a research context: you do not have
direct observation, but you are assuming that peer review and other mechanisms
have ensured the literature is grounded in direct observation.

A journalist recounting first-hand experiences or recounting those of people
he/she has interviewed is really doing direct data collection or
experimentation: the reason you try to get multiple sources for a significant
claim is precisely why scientists run experiments multiple times.

A journalist claiming second-hand experiences as first-hand is equivalent to
claiming to have observational data when in actuality you are relaying the
conclusion of another experiment.

Take this neuro-toxin example: it happened to N people, but by claiming to
meet them personally, he's implying it happens _more often_ but is covered up,
which would mean the real prevalence is higher (when in reality, we have no
evidence that they are).

Or take the suicide rates. By claiming concentration via personal experience,
the claim is contrary to what we know through more rigorous data collection,
which is that the rates firm-wide are lower than for the Chinese population in
general.

Also, the problem of your metaphor is you presume that the model f(observed
facts, gut instinct, emotion) yields more valid inference than the sum of
multiple journalists' f(observed facts). This is crap. If f(gut instinct,
emotion) skew systematically -- a more reasonable conclusion than the
counterfactual -- then no, your approach is less valid.

Nassim Taleb had a nice bit about how he doesn't read the news; instead he
reads textbooks or other long-production-cycle reports. This is because, he
says, the frontier of knowledge doesn't change very often. So what you get in
the news is a fundamentally biased sample of only the outliers (which sells
papers) and never the consensus that is generally 99% of the body of
knowledge.

TL;DR: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyFpOp8Ft0Q>

~~~
pron
Oh, sure, I wasn't referrimg to this case but to tptacek's remark about
narrative journalism and the article on Truman Capote he linked to.

And just to make sure: I'm not claiming that a longer, more careful and more
rigorous observation does not yield a more accurate approximation. I'm just
responding to a common complaint against journalists that if only they would
stick to what they've actually observed and can prove that would necessarily
produce better journalism; this is wrong.

And as for Nassim Taleb not reading the news, only textbooks - well, I don't
have a problem with the first part, but if the obsessive, anal Mr. Taleb
insists on only the most rigorous sources for learning about this world, than
he has a very limited soul, indeed.

~~~
tptacek
How'd you get started doing long-form print journalism? Why'd you stop? What
are you doing now?

~~~
pron
Hmmm :), it's a long story, but I can tell you the gist of it. My bachelor's
degree is in math and computer science, but after 9 years in professional
software development, I came to realize that it wasn't fulfilling enough. I
went back to university and studied medieval history (which proved to be a
tremendous help in my job as a journalist) and started working for a small web
magazine. After a year of doing that, I began pestering a lot of people,
walking the streets of Tel-Aviv with hard copies of my stories that I gave out
to any big-name journalist that I happened to bounce into, and eventually I
was lucky to get an interview with a magazine editor who hired me as a fact-
checker; things started rolling quickly from there. Alongside that I worked on
a big personal software project, my reporting sustaining me just barely, and
not taxing the math circuits of my brains too much - I needed those for my
software. After four years at the magazine, with my software project nearly
finished, I realized it was time to either turn it into a business or let it
remain an interesting algorithms research. I chose the former, and since
January have been putting the finishing touches. I've applied to YC, I'll be
launching my startup later this week with an announcement here on HN, and will
be releasing a big, and I think very interesting, open-source product (an
important component of the main software) later in April. I hope to go back to
writing eventually, if only part-time.

Actually, I've learned a lot of interesting things about the startup culture
(specifically that of Silicon Valley) from reading HN comments (seriously,
it's fascinating). There's probably a story there, one that hasn't been told
yet.

------
megaduck
What's really tragic here is that the truth in Mr. Daisey's story will get
dragged down by the weight of his lies.

Chinese factory conditions are often horrible, and there's often a blatant
disregard for human life and dignity. Mr. Daisey did a pretty good job of
conveying these ideas in a way that well-heeled westerners could understand at
a gut level.

However, his pursuit of storytelling over journalism is going to destroy all
that. People are going to (rightfully) pitch the fact out along with the
fiction, because there's no way to distinguish the two.

It just makes me sad.

~~~
tptacek
What "truth" in his story? How do you know? The most dangerous thing you can
do with a story like this is try to pick apart the things that seem true; your
brain is wired to make the wrong things seem authentic.

~~~
megaduck
I know because I've seen it. My wife and I used to live in China, and we did
traveling in both the high and the low places.

I can't speak to the particulars in Daisey's story (since I don't know which
ones were made up), but the overall picture he painted sounded familiar. It's
unquestionable that there are horrible working conditions in Chinese
factories.

That's the tragedy here. There's millions of awful wonderful horrible stories
you can tell about Chinese factories, and Mike Daisey is obscuring them by
making up his own.

~~~
gwright
And how would you compare the work in the factories to being a Chinese farm
worker, for example? Why are millions choosing factories over farms?

I think it is more important that there is a trend towards improved work
environments and opportunities than bemoaning the fact that any particular
work environment isn't as good as some cushy 1st-world white-collar job.

~~~
pron
Oh, no. Again with the "choosing". Since I read similar arguments quite often
here on HN, I want to give a general, rather than particular answer. The short
version is, people under duress can't really "choose" anything, even if it may
seem to some free-market capitalists as if they do.

Let me paint a fictional picture for you. Say there's this island that's been
ravaged by natural disasters and famine, and its entire population is
starving. Rich people from a nearby country realize the islanders are in real
distress and will be willing to do a lot for anyone who will save them from
certain, horrible death, so they decide to use them as workers. So the rich
people set up shop on the island, and the locals start working for them. Some
of the rich people pay the workers (each of them producing, say $100's of
product a day) with one loaf of bread, oh, and they also rape the women. Some
pay their workers $2 a day, and they don't rape the women. Naturally the
locals love the latter group, while that group of rich people from the
mainland describe how they've saved the poor islanders from certain death and
have even treated them rather humanely - well, at least compared to some
others. They praise the wisdom of the market who let them gain from the
islanders' cheap workforce, while letting the islanders survive.

Now, this (fictional) story is not about China. It's about anywhere an
impoverished population, or anyone under extreme duress, lives. Speaking about
choice under such conditions is preposterous. People will choose a quick death
over slow mutilation. People will choose enslavement over annihilation.
Believe me, there's no "free will" at work here, and whether or not the rich
people from the mainland have done any good to the island, they certainly have
nothing to brag about because they're exploiters who've saved a population
merely to enslave it.

My story is extreme and I am not making any direct comparisons. I _am_ saying
that poor people are not "free" and they most certainly can't "choose", and if
they do have a sliver of choice in their miserable lives (akin to the choice
an innocent man might have for his last meal before execution), there is
certainly nothing for anyone here to be proud about - certainly not about
providing them with "alternatives" (like commuting the innocent's sentence to
a life of forced labor).

~~~
Produce
As another anecdote for the lack of social mobility that the vast majority of
people experience, how many people born into wealth has anyone witnessed
transition into the working class? What's the ratio of that population to
people born into wealth who stay wealthy? Just as it is extremely difficult to
be born poor and end up rich, so it is the other way round. People often
forget the ever looming hidden factors in these situations; morale and mind-
set. From all of the research I've done on what makes people successful, it's
all in the mind. From all the research I've done on what makes people change,
it's all in the environment. In other words, mindset is intimately linked with
the conditions one finds himself in which in turn dictate actions. A nuance of
this is that mind-set also modifies environment which, in turn, affects mind-
set again. It's a self-modifying system; the feedback loop that is your
consciousness.

This is all hardly surprising - just as individual physical particles have
inertia, so do we.

------
Gnolfo
In Daisey's response: _"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."_

He doesn't seem to get why lying and exaggerating and sensationalizing a topic
for the sake of its awareness doesn't work out in the long run.

If it's accepted when you do it for your cause, it's accepted when others do
it for their cause. Now all you've done is diminished the attention garnered
by the nature, impact and realities of a given issue by legitimizing the use
of hyperbole and alarmism spun by its champions. To take a page from The Power
of Nightmares, in the end the winners aren't the issues that genuinely need
more attention, but the issues whose supporters can pitch the scariest stories
to the public.

Any issue still needs good supporters and good supporters still need to frame
strong, influential narratives, and there's plenty of room in journalism for
creating a narrative while staying within the bounds of facts. There's also
room in theater and the arts in general to contribute fictional narratives
towards an issue but the distinction is very important. To lower that gate of
verifiable facts and evidence for journalism does nothing but to erode the
important role journalism has in society at large.

If what TAL says is true about Daisey misleading them with the fact-checking
rounds, then Daisey certainly crossed a line and knew full well that he was
passing off performance as reporting. His peers in this respect are the likes
of Fox News where it's considered acceptable to spread information you want
others to believe as truth, for the sake of the issues you yourself feel are
important. It's a shame because I think objectively most would agree the
working conditions in china are an issue that doesn't deserve the same tactics
used by say the Obama birth certificate "issue".

Saying he regrets doing so now, while simultaneously saying he's proud of the
attention raised on the issue, shows that he is in fact not regretful at all.
It's even easier to see it since he never expressed regret until now. His only
regret is that he was caught.

------
VMG
from [http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/ieconomy/acclaimed-
ap...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/ieconomy/acclaimed-apple-critic-
made-details):

 _I pressed Cathy to confirm other key details that Daisey reported. Did the
guards have guns when you came here with Mike Daisey? With each question I got
the same answer from Lee. “No,” or “This is not true.”

Daisey claims he met underage workers at Foxconn. He says he talked to a man
whose hand was twisted into a claw from making iPads. He describes visiting
factory dorm rooms with beds stacked to the ceiling. But Cathy says none of
this happened._

I must say that while listening to the story some things seemed a little
exaggerated, and the his whole style didn't seem very objective. But I didn't
suspect that he made things up from whole cloth.

~~~
aaronharnly
Has no one considered the possibility that this Chinese citizen, who lives and
works in China, might not be well served by asserting the truth of Daisey's
story?

His apology seems to concede a fair amount of dramatization, and he didn't (in
advance of hearing the Ira/Mike conversation) appear to assert the truth of
those specific parts of the story. But supposing he did stand by some of these
details, we'd have a he said/she said, with strong incentives on each side.

~~~
tptacek
Daisey has himself conceded dishonesty (though he calls it "dramatic
license").

------
Groxx
Site's having major load problems, but the google text-only caches work
reasonably well:

Link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.thi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/460/retraction&hl=en&biw=1123&bih=679&site=webhp&strip=1)

Blog post:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-
mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory&hl=en&strip=1)

------
jschuur
Mike's response: <http://mikedaisey.blogspot.in/2012/03/statement-on-tal.html>

~~~
tptacek
"It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its
story, and I believe it does so with integrity".

There is no integrity in lying to fact checkers to ensure your piece gets on
the air.

Shafer:

 _[...] But what joins D’Agata and Capote is this: Both love “real” facts, but
when blocked by journalistic convention from the literary effects they desire,
they willingly leapt that fence to create whatever rules they needed to
enhance their work. Because he admits to his shape-shifting, D’Agata’s work is
harmless. Capote’s book, on the other hand [...]_

[...]

 _That other field, the much smaller one strewn with landmines, rusting rebar
and barking dogs is called non-fiction — or in its less effete incarnation,
journalism. Oddly, without an accurate record as our anchor, it would be
difficult to create fiction, as former New York Times Executive Editor Max
Frankel observed in a 1998 essay. “Wrong facts and the truths derived from
them are always correctable — with more facts. Fictional facts are forever
counterfeit,” Frankel writes._

 _I believe in journalism, not journalists, and welcome anybody with a
notebook, a recorder or a 94 percent total-recall memory to help clear our
field and plant it with their work as long as they have a true story to tell.
As for latter-day Capotes and D’Agatas, I can give you Google Maps directions
to the land of fiction._

~~~
nikcub
the last time I heard a similar line was from Ben Mezrich, the guy who wrote
'accidental billionares' about Facebook.

~~~
tptacek
Even the response is dishonest. "I'm sorry I _allowed_ TAL to run an except
from my story". The guy lied to fact-checkers to get the story on the air.
There's nothing passive about that. Nothing he says is trustworthy.

------
icarus_drowning
My biggest problem with Daisey? The fact that the only thing he gains from his
fabrications is self-aggrandizement.

So many of the things he claims to have seen aren't in essence untrue: hexane
poisoning _did happen_ , he just didn't meet (and tell a true story) about
_how_. Underage workers do exist, but I think it is less than clear whether
Daisy met any of them. Terrible abuses resulting in lasting, terrible physical
damage (or death) clearly are occurring, but _Daisey isn't the one uncovering
them_ , he isn't the heroic reporter interviewing the victims to reveal their
plight.

When Daisey defends his work, he's really defending _himself_ as the champion
of the oppressed. This, I think, is really about his _ego_ , not about the
plight of any abused Chinese worker.

------
charlieok
"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be
heard [...] 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."

What kind of explanation is that? Public accusations should be supported by
things like evidence and facts, “journalism” or not.

------
crag
Welcome to America. Standard behavior with all broadcast media. I'm not
blaming NPR.. but the producers of This American Life, in their zeal of
catching a top story cut corners. And now, I consider this Daisey fellow as
low as Rush Limbaugh; making up crap as hes running to the bank cashing
checks.

It's sad.

------
mikescar
Respect for Ira Glass to so totally and transparently own the problem.

He's not blaming anyone but himself, and by devoting his next show to this
topic, is demonstrating more integrity than what we have come to expect. The
public deserves no less, but in our era that is still rare.

------
nikcub
I haven't listened to this episode yet (I am about 40 behind) but it seems
that a lot of these claims could have been debunked with a few emails to
people on the ground in Shenzen.

It would be interesting if TAL (or others) would gather together a group of
experts who are connected in various industries and bounce stories off of them
before publishing.

This could even be a startup idea - a marketplace of experts and connected
people for the purpose of fact checking. We live in a super-connected society
where 'stories from China' should be easy to debunk.

------
brudgers
In all honesty, what did This American Life think it was reporting? Daisey
presents a one man show, surely the folks at NPR can distinguish that from
investigative journalism.

Marketplace's journalism is akin to investigating the false claims in Upton
Sinclair's _The Jungle_. That no person named "Stanislovas Lukoszas" was ever
eaten alive by rats, is hardly a revelation.

It's _This American Life_ which is unclear about where journalism begins and
ends and what constitutes journalistic integrity and what constitutes
muckraking.

------
peteforde
I am reminded of a short article from Harpers which suddenly feels relevant
all over again.

<http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/0083770>

------
booticon
With the claims of using "dramatic license," it sounds like he's trying to
have it both ways, especially since he was on _Real Time with Bill Maher_
recently, and a lot of these things that turned out to be fabricated he
mentioned in the interview as though they were fact:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iebnHvxKqlY>

------
rit
Notably as well, This American Life released the podcast and audio stream
early to their website so everyone could hear it. I listened to the podcast
this morning and was impressed at the way they approached it.

A particularly poignant bit for me was near the end, as Ira Glass is having a
conversation with Rob Schmitz. I'm paraphrasing slightly from memory. Ira asks
Rob after discussing the fact that it is established fact that many Foxconn
workers do double shifts and insane amounts of overtime, "I own many of these
products, should I feel bad?"

Rob replies (again paraphrasing), "It isn't my job as a reporter to tell you
how to feel. It is my job to gather facts and report them as accurately as
possible and let you decide."

I feel like that is one of the most important ethics missing from so much of
journalism today. And it isn't just Fox News: almost every journalism source
which fits into mainstream reporting these days seems to want to editorialize
the news and push us on how we should feel.

------
Abomonog
On this week's episode of This American Life, we will devote the entire hour
to detailing the errors in "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory."

That's a stand-up move. I hate it when a retraction gets far less attention
than the original story.

------
jrockway
It's nice to know that real journalism is not dead. I love NPR.

~~~
mhansen
FYI, This American Life is WBEZ, not NPR (although TAL cooperates with NPR for
things like the excellent Planet Money)

------
dr_
I've never understood why no one asked Daisey a simple question. The clothes
that he is wearing at the moment, the shirt, pants, undergarments. Where were
they most likely manufactured? And does he think plants that manufacture
clothing are in any way better than Foxconn? My guess is no, they are not.

------
mrgreenfur
Daisey isn't a journalist, he does theatre. He shouldn't've gone on a
journalism program.

------
meatsock
the real headline here is that you can turn around a bad beat with good
intentions and proper follow-through. good job being forthright and correcting
the problem, this american life. perhaps sony could learn from this example.

------
pullo
the need to improve working conditions in third world factories is real.
Mr.Daisy in his 'passion' to be broadcast and the rare sloppy work by TAL will
cast a shadow on future investigative reports of this kind. Apple did release
the list of its suppliers after the TAL story. i hope they keep up their drive
to be more transparent irrespective of this blotch by TAL.

------
tuxguy
Kudos to Ira Glass & TAL for being honest

------
tomjen3
Are they still worth listening to?

~~~
MartinCron
With very few exceptions, everything from This American Life is worth
listening to. I would still listen to this, as not _everything_ he said was
fabricated, but I wouldn't file away anything I heard as objective fact.

~~~
ugh
It’s a well told story, it’s good radio. You can definitely see the appeal of
it as a monologue. But it was presented as fact and is not, not completely. I
would recommend listening to both the original show and the redaction back to
back, they are both very powerful and well made.

~~~
MartinCron
Agreed. I am very eager to hear the retraction show.

~~~
ugh
If you didn't know, it’s already online (earlier than usual). Here’s the link:
[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/460/r...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/460/retraction)

~~~
MartinCron
I didn't know. Thanks for the heads up, I'm downloading it now.

------
carguy1983
Anyone who's ever spent more than a couple days in China (or HK, or Singapore,
or Taiwan, really) can tell you that very, very little of what you see
published about China/Chinese people in the western media is accurate. Much of
it is hyperbole or selective truths or just downright fabrications.

It's designed for a western audience and plays on assumptions and stereotypes
that exist of China/Chinese people - apart from interviews with serious
professionals or scholars who have spent time there (like on Charlie Rose)
you're bound to be left with a very distorted view of what "China" is (and
isn't).

How do you describe one quarter of the entire population of earth in any sort
of accurate way? It's impossible, but it sure does sell copy when you try.

~~~
stephencanon
Very much true. I'm constantly amazed at the beliefs that people in the US and
EU have about day to day life in China. In my (admittedly limited) experience,
in the cities, it's a lot like day to day life in any western country. In
extremely poor rural areas, it's somewhat different, but that's because of the
extreme poverty, not because it's China.

------
guelo
So exciting when a giant global corporation has a PR coup against its
naysayers.

~~~
rbarooah
By 'naysayers', do you mean people spreading false statements?

------
evan_
I predict that the anti-Apple movement will say that the story was mostly true
as told, and any denials by the Chinese interpreter were politically
motivated, forced by Foxconn and the Chinese government.

~~~
baconner
It's not an anti-apple movement its a fair and humane electronics
manufacturing labor movement. Apple is a huge and well known brand so they are
natural fit for a story, but its also well known and reported that foxconn and
friends are widely used by other electronics companies.

These are serious issues about how human beings are treated and they deserve
more from than a reframe into a silly tribal squabble over who prefers what
brand.

~~~
jonhendry
"It's not an anti-apple movement its a fair and humane electronics
manufacturing labor movement."

China's labor problems aren't limited to their electronics factories.

~~~
baconner
Fair point, but electronics has been the recent center of it. There's long
been an overall fair labor movement no?

~~~
jonhendry
Not sure how much that has reached into China. And industries like coal mining
in China desperately need worker protections, but Western consumer purchases
are unlikely to have any way to cause that.

------
Dylan16807
This is certainly going to turn out in an interesting way. So far, the main
thing being questioned is apparently the people he met, and while that is
important to _his_ integrity, it doesn't affect the story of the factory
workers.

I'm going to listen very intently to this episode. Is he telling what _could_
be true, or is he the worst kind of liar, manufacturing controversy?

------
KVFinn
My takeaway from the TAL email is that the conditions he describes are true
the most part, with the exception of underage workers being common. This
doesn't match the media coverage at all -- I suppose we'll all find out when
they release the full episode. The impression I get from these parts:

>"In our original broadcast, _we fact checked all the things that Daisey said
about Apple's operations in China," says Glass, "and those parts of his story
were true_ , except for the underage workers, who are rare."

>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."

But he mushed them all together into a narrative and framed it as if he has
personally seen and talked with these people.

Skimming the mainstream coverage I get the impression that both his personal
story and the facts about the manufacturing culture were equally wrong. So he
did the cause was fighting for vastly more harm than good: people now believe
the problem itself doesn't exist. Whoops. Way to go dude.

I'll be interested to hear the correction episode to see how they detangle the
falsehoods in the author's personal story vs things that aren't happening (or
aren't happening with enough frequency to be concerned about.)

Certainly suggesting that a westerner with a single week in China would
encounter all these problems exaggerates their frequency even if the problems
are real. It suggests that if he can find all this out so easily, what else
must be going on? On the other hand, many of his claims about conditions so
seem to be real issues backed by other reporting. It will be a tricky episode.

edit: lol, lowest rated comment out of hundreds. my judgement must be out of
whack, i'll take another look at this story tomorrow with a clear head.

~~~
rbarooah
What makes you think the conditions he describes are true?

~~~
KVFinn
I quoted the parts of the email that led me to that impression in the original
post.

~~~
rbarooah
Daisey tells horrifying stories including one of a guy with a useless and
twisted hand from making iPads.

Those create a very impression different from the one that we're left with.
I'd say that for the most part what Daisey adds beyond the official reports is
his fabrications.

------
infiniteburp
Was this a stage play? If that's the case the "Reality Distortion Field"? is
part of the schtick. If ThisAmLife crimped "facts" from it, it's their fault.

~~~
jonhendry
It's a one-man monologue, but the thing is, Daisey was widely interviewed and
published, restating his claims about what he "found" in China. Not just on
stage and This American Life, but also a NY Times Op/Ed, and interviews on
CBS, etc.

------
genu1
I am an iOS developer and I listened to the episode with "Mr. Daisey & The
Apple Factory".

It definitely struck a cord in me; two specific things.

#1 Excellence is in the culture. Unabashed, aggressive, and strident. If you
didn't read the docs then why are you even talking? That kind of attitude. iOS
more than any other language is a club for readers, because devs here respect
the legacy of code. But since I am American and because I have my pick of
whatever platform or language, I have a choice. No matter what my situation,
what excuse I may make, at the end of the day I chose iOS and I adopted
Apple's culture. But, if I were in a different situation, where there really
isn't another job out there, and culture is not really a choice, and I was
forced to perform on such a level (and Apple's culture bleeds into every facet
of its organization, software, hardware, sales) it might be a waking
nightmare. It is one thing to embrace the grind to stay up night after night,
eating garbage, working on your next startup because it is in your blood, and
being broke and poor and performing to the beat of a driven man's rhythm.

#2 I'm sure there is a significant reason why China doesn't see the release of
iOS products until much later but it still just rubs me the wrong way. Having
iOS products released sooner than later in your country is a privilege. Does
the country that make these products not deserve that privilege?

I love This American Life, I love iOS and the objective-c language, and am an
admirer of Steve Jobs and the company he created. I don't have any heated
feeling about anyone in all this so let me say I have nothing but respect for
all parties involved. However there is a common thread in all this between
Apple, Steve, China and startup culture--the pursuit of excellence at the cost
of normal human needs, and the amount of suffering/neglect man is willing to
put himself through to achieve his/her goals--that widened my eyes, because it
somehow reminded me of what I was doing to myself. You all know what I'm
talking about. If you have ever hustled, tried your hand as a founder,
embraced the grind you know; the depth of depravity we all put yourselves
through to reach an ephemeral goal. It has no taste though sweet in our minds.
Always driven with trained eyes unwavering stares, focused, mental, cold as
some might describe us. All for what? But to perform at a high level. All else
being secondary.

I look forward to the corrections episode and am working harder to embrace my
fun side.

------
peterwwillis
I'm all for journalistic integrity, but it sounds like all the important facts
of the story were at least based on actual events and the rest was dramatic
license to make the piece resonate emotionally. I think dedicating a whole
show just to explaining the discrepancies is a little overboard and as a
listener i'm not interested in spending that much time just for them to say
"some of the things in the story were inaccurate". A simple 5 or 10 minute
explanation and a long-winded piece online would have sufficed.

------
easterisle
An interesting coincidence - NPR is underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. I wonder if Gates helped fund this show in particular?

~~~
infiniteburp
This is not a dumb comment. B&M Gates foundation does put a lot of money into
NPR. To think that the management and producers at NPR are not aware of this
is ingenuous. Every editor in the country is aware of who's paying for the
ads. There's certainly cases where MSFT has gotten prominent puff pieces
placed into All Things Considered. Both AAPL and MSFT have "long arm"
marketing strategies; don't put it past them to pull a stunt like this.

~~~
tptacek
It's a dumb comment because NPR has nothing to do with This American Life even
if you believe that the largest private charity foundation in the world is a
shill for Microsoft.

