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This American Life Retracts Episode On Apple Factories In China
New submitter Hartree writes "This American Life aired an episode in January about visiting Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen China that supplies Apple with iPhones and iPads. It was the most downloaded of all of its episodes. That show helped prompt Apple to release, for the first time, a list of its suppliers and allow outside audits of working conditions at its suppliers. This American Life has now retracted the episode after finding out that Mike Daisey, whose visit to the factory the show was based on, fabricated portions of the story. This included a number of minor items, but also major ones such as his saying that he personally met underage workers and those poisoned by hexane exposure. To set the record straight, this weekend's episode of This American Life will present how they were mislead into airing a flawed story (PDF)."
...is how I read the headline...how appropriate
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
It really is nice to see that someone has journalistic integrity in this day and age. Rather than ignoring their mistake or trying to hush it up, they're saying they messed up, this is what they did wrong, and this is how it happened.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
...as opposed to what we see in the media every day...(?)
This kind of story, where they can go seriously meta about how they fact-check their stories and how they were misled, set to mournful music, is an almost perfect This American Life setup. They will probably want to goof like this every year now. OK, I'm being very snarky, but Ira Glass is just way too sincere for my taste.
Ira Glass is a man of honour. Would we EVER see another news agency do this?
You know, Foxconn does some shitty things with their employees. But it's stuff like this that takes all the legitimate complaints and paints it over with, "See, it's all a lie." I hope Mike Daisey gets a horrible rash on his balls for this snow job.
I8-D
It's important to note that the details that were false all involve Daisey personally witnessing events. He didn't, he just learned about them. So some of the specific examples are dramatizations, but all the basic facts of the horrendous working conditions are true. He just didn't personally talk with the effected workers.
So, yes, This American Life should clarify the story and should admit that they screwed up in claiming that a dramatization was pure fact. But they did, in fact, check out all the basic facts about the working conditions, and everything claimed is based on things that really happened.
Don't try and take this as evidence that the troubles at Foxconn were fabricated or that Apple was unfairly targeted based on fake stories. They were not.
Actually, according to the article, some were. No one ever saw armed guards, for example, yet that was a prominent part of his story. Underage workers were also only rumors. And of the facts that were true, they were not nearly so commonplace that a casual trip would find them-- he had to pull together anecdotes across space and time to make it seem like all this stuff was happening casually and consistently. It wasn't.
E pluribus unum
More like he admitted he took quite a bit of license in his retelling of events. I may be an Apple lover, but I'm a nerd first, and facts matter in the world of nerds, regardless of who they favor.
The monologue he engages in contains the following:
...and all these people have been exposed [to N-hexane]...Their hands shake uncontrollably. Most of them...can't even pick up a glass.
But then to quote from another interview with him in the last few days after he was confronted with his interpreter's contrary testimony:
Rob Schmitz: Cathy says you did not talk to workers who were poisoned with hexane.
Mike Daisey: That’s correct.
RS: So you lied about that? That wasn’t what you saw?
MD: I wouldn’t express it that way.
RS: How would you express it?
MD: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip.
Ira Glass: Did you meet workers like that? Or did you just read about the issue?
MD: I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been, and it was a constant conversation among those workers.
IG: So you didn’t meet an actual worker who’d been poisoned by hexane.
MD: That’s correct.
Getting the facts out should be in every nerd's interest, regardless of who they favor. This guy is clearly a liar and is being slimy in all of his responses. He could've lied about any major manufacturer. I'm glad he's being discredited. Even he admits it wasn't the truth now:
My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had [my monologue] on your show as journalism. And it’s not journalism. It’s theater.
NPR (National Public Radio) doesn't have anything to do with the production or distribution of This American Life. It is produced independently by WBEZ and distributed by PRI (Public Radio International, a direct competitor to NPR)
No one ever saw armed guards, for example, yet that was a prominent part of his story.
The article just says that the translator never saw any armed guards, it never says they weren't there. Again, This American Life claims they did fact check parts like this, and found that they were true. But I can't find anything else that corroborates "armed guards at the gate" without referencing Daisey so I'll concede that point.
Underage workers were also only rumors.
And if you read the article, This American Life addressed that in their original story. The found that there were, in fact, underage workers at Foxconn - but they were rare.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Except Apple seems to be the only one being targeted. Why? Are conditions magically better in other factories in China? I doubt it.
Not only that, but Foxconn doesn't just make Apple products - it makes stuff for Dell, HP, etc.
From the way these stories have been reported, you'd think there was this awful, rundown, slum-like section of the Foxconn factory making the Apple products, while a shiny state-of-the-art part of the factory, staffed by smiling suit-wearing adult Chinese workers, was putting together all the other companies' products.
#DeleteChrome
Underage workers were also only rumors.
Apple's own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Except Apple seems to be the only one being targeted. Why? Are conditions magically better in other factories in China? I doubt it.
Apple is targeted more than others for two main reasons:
1. Apple presents itself as a "think different", hip, cool, enlightened company, much more so than any other consumer electronics brand. So this kind of thing contrasts with their public image much more strongly than any other consumer electronics company.
2. Because of item 1, it's a bigger hypocrisy for Apple than for any other similar company, and thus easier to apply pressure to them in order to bring attention to these conditions.
3. Apple is now the richest company in the entire history of the world. They can afford to use a bit of their profits to improve worker conditions.
Conclusion: it's entirely justified to target Apple more than other companies for the same shortcomings.
The TAL pieces on the economy are produced by NPR's Planet Money team, which also produce their own short biweekly podcasts and occasionally write for various magazines as well.
If you liked those TAL pieces, definitely give Planet Money a shot.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Fox news did show that news shows are not legally obligated to tell the truth http://www.foxbghsuit.com/. News team showed that Canada and other countries ban Bovine Growth Hormone. Monsanto didn't like that and pressured Fox to keep changing the story before release to the point the new story would have been a lie. Finally the news team quit and filed a whistleblower lawsuit. The whistleblower lawsuit was thrown out because Fox news was not guilty of breaking the law as the FCC has no rules requiring news to be the truth.