Performer and monologist Mike Daisey has been all over the news since the This American Life radio show retracted its most downloaded episode ever in which Daisey talked about visiting Foxconn, the Chinese factory that Apple products are made in. This American Life said that Daisey’s story contained “significant fabrications.” The New York Times also edited an article it ran by Daisey to reflect the inaccurate re-telling of his experience at Foxconn in China.
To put it plainly, Daisey said he saw things he never saw and met people he never met. He’s been feeding his audiences false information for many months. For the first time in the show’s history, This American Life has run a special retraction episode to clear up the mess. If you’ve been following the Apple/Foxconn issue, you should really give it a listen.
A full transcript of the 58-minute radio show is available, but we strongly suggest listening to the episode in its entirety. This American Life host Ira Glass and Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz explain the dirty details of how Daisey’s lies were uncovered, including an interview with the Chinese interpreter Daisey used during his visit at Foxconn. Daisey himself is then interviewed and asked to explain himself (that part is particularly painful to listen to). The episode is finished with an accurate look at what Foxconn is really like by New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg (a reporter involved in the ‘iEconomy’ series). A longer interview between Ira Glass and Duhigg is also available with more information about Apple and manufacturing in China.
Daisey continues to stand by his work under the umbrella of dramatic license, but the real problem here is that he lied to turn his work of art into a work of journalism. Despite the scandal, theaters continue to support Daisey, and his show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, is scheduled to be performed through the summer.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
10 responses to “Listen To Mike Daisey’s Agony On The Special Retraction Episode Of “This American Life””
I listened to the Cult of Mac podcast where this was discussed. I don’t claim to have great knowledge of what working conditions in China are like, but I got the impression from the hosts that although Daisey fabricated some of his information, that it brought to light what were felt to be poor working conditions in that country.
My question is this: What is it like to work at NON-Foxconn companies in China? Are they luxury palaces compared to Foxconn? Are the people who work at Foxconn the ones who can’t get a good job anywhere else?
I think before we berate Apple and Foxconn over the 12 hour working conditions and how awful they are, it would be helpful to know what we are comparing things to. It is inappropriate to make comparisons to working conditions in China with those here in the U.S. Those may be conditions that residents in the U.S. would be unwilling to work under, but they may be far better than what others in China have to deal with.
Are there safety issues, exposure to chemicals that are known to be toxic or harmful? That certainly is possible, and if Apple can make Foxconn improve safety in these areas, it is possible that Foxconn could be a model of how a factory of this type can be run.
Why would I want to listen to some fat bloated bastard who spewed falsehoods? This guy should have his fat ass sued by Apple for slander!
Lying liars and the lies that they tell…
…I am always amazed by the paternalism of guys like Daisey who presume to care about the Chinese people more than the Chinese people themselves do…
…and then resort to lying to get attention and make money on the lies.
He lied. He has no case. If he said his monologue was fiction, he could call Steve Jobs King Kong and people could say, “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” but that’s not what he did. And after the curtain came down, he lied to the faces of journalists and continued to promote himself — the true object all along. The NYT then compounded the problem by taking a public Apple report and calling it journalism. I knew these people were lying (yes, people, Daisey wasn’t alone) because they surfed the wave of Apple, rarely if ever mentioning that all tech is made in these plants including HP, Microsoft and dozens of others. Are there deficiencies, problems, and the handiwork of greed at Foxconn and other plants in China? Yes, certainly. But it wasn’t an Apple problem, it was and is an industry problem. You can’t defend a Mike Daisey because he’s a good story-teller when the story is a lie. He’s a liar for money. That’s greed, pure and simple, the disease he applied to Apple.
He made up a lot of things but the most egregious ones were about the underage workers and the guy with the the crippled hand that was supposed to have been crushed by a machine that made iPads. These are serious allegations that you better document meticulously if you are going to claim them as facts. On hindsight it looks like he realized this and so in his reworked show, he claimed that, unlike him, his interpreter “did not remember” the conversation they had with the underaged workers.
His assertion that he was motivated by his passion and compassion for the poor workers doesn’t ring that sincere to me. If he really was that concerned, he would spend more time than just parachute in for a week, do no background research, and then cobble up a third rate hack job that was found to be off-kilter or weird by everyone who spent some time on the ground in China. All the emotion he displayed was just posturing as part of his pitch to sell his latest ‘work of art’. In the end he’s just another publicity whore who knows how to tug at the heart strings of a particular group of people and thus have them gladly open up their wallets so he can fish a few dollar bills out of it.
What about calling out the rest of the fabrications in this issue like the “suicide cluster” at Foxconn when in reality Foxconn has a vastly LOWER suicide rate than pretty much everywhere else.
He originally claimed he couldn’t remember the name of the translator etc which just reeks of wanting to make sure no one could easily find her to check his facts. Why would he do that if not because he was flat out lying.
The worse part is that he marketed his show as based on facts, not fictionalized from them. He takes credit for creating this concern etc when he did (the whole FLA etc started way before he or NYT etc came into the game) and so on.
And even now he’s trying to weasel out of it worse than Gizmodo after they were caught with (by the law) stolen goods that they admitted on their site to paying for etc.
Agreed with you on the non Foxconn issue but what about the non Apple factories run by Foxconn. What were the conditions at the XBox factory that made 100 folks climb up on a roof and threaten to jump together. What did Microsoft do about that situation or did they just tell Foxconn to let the folks jump if they wish and then replace them.
He should print a disclaimer on all future tickets.
He wants to keep using the Steve Jobs name too.