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A celebrated broadcast of This American Life that depicted life at one of Apple’s manufacturing plants in China has been retracted. The venerated public radio program said the episode, from monologuist Mike Daisey, was partially fabricated, and that they would address the topic on their weekly broadcast this week. The new episode will feature a rundown of the fabrications fro Rob Schmitz, a reporter for Marketplace, as well as a discussion between Ira Glass and Mike Daisey. Schmitz will interview the translator for Daisey during his trip to Foxconn, who describes discrepancies between his report and her recollections.
Daisey, whose story on his experiences in China has received much acclaim, released a statement on the retraction.
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.
That’s the real tragedy of the retraction. The Times investigation and other reports have not been challenged; in fact, Times reporter Charles Duhigg will appear on TAL this weekend, and Apple has corroborated some of the claims. But Daisey, though he tries to shirk responsibility for factual accuracy, did through his participation on This American Life carry some authority, which has now been shattered. And it unnecessarily colors those other investigations, and gives defenders of unfair labor practices in China and elsewhere a foothold to dismiss the charges.
Overall, this is a setback for international labor reform, and it didn’t have to happen at all.
You can find more information in this blog post from TAL host Ira Glass.
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So the counterattack on Mike Daisey begins. How disgusting. He has done more than anyone else, including the NYT, to expose the appalling conditions at Apple/Foxconn. I doubt the NYT would _ever_ have run their piece had Daisey not been engaging in a theatrical/performance version of samizdat on this subject for years, which was getting an underground buzz they could not ignore. This American Life is not “venerable.” It’s a shadow of what public radio used to be, as for instance with the craven puff piece on privatization in Colorado they ran a few weeks ago, which was a half hour of journalistic fellatio on the government-haters. Also, “Marketplace” is a soft-focus daily rundown of bankster ideology, so I’m not surprised they were given the task of putting the knife into Daisey.
Disagree. Daisey fucked up. He should not have put himself in that position. And he lied to fact-checkers. The moment he did that he set back reporting on labor conditions a decade. This is only the by-product.
Let’s hear what Daisey says about this beyond the statement he released today before we join the lynch mob. It sounds as if he created a pastiche for theatrical purposes to get at the truth of what it means to be a worker who never gets to even turn on the iPad he’s slaved to make. This kind of fictional treatment is widely accepted on the right and left when it suits their purpose or flatters their prejudices (paeans to “fictionalized history to get at the essence” fill the literary review pages from the NYT to the Nation). But again. let’s hear from him too, including what transpired between him and TAL. In any event, the notion that he set back reporting on labor relations a decade is hyperbolic nonsense. Labor reporting is basically absent from American journalism, and was in no way on the rebound before little Mike Daisey killed it off.
At the same time, without Daisey raising the issue, would we even know about it?
If someone made a totally factual “Day in the Life of a Nursing Home Caregiver Making Minimum Wage in Minnetonka, Minnisota” would NPR air it? Would it be entertaining enough so someone listens? I say just go to WhatsHisName’s fictional place where everyone’s better than average, and tell of the happy go lucky minimum wage worker.
Actually a piece titled “the Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs” tells you right there it’s fictional. I don’t believe Steve Jobs felt any agony or sympathy for his, no not HIS, but his contractor’s slaves. He felt agony from pancreatic cancer but I don’t think that was covered.
Too bad the performance artist felt it necessary to lie, but maybe he thought shedding light on the problem (to assuage his own guilt for loving these slave created electronics) was the end justifying his means.