This American Life Retracts Episode On Apple Factories In China 326
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)."
This American Lie (Score:5, Funny)
...is how I read the headline...how appropriate
Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL. NPR gets caught publishing a massive lie by an anti-corporation hipster, and you respond by attacking Fox News?
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. He did exactly what he said that FOX News would have done. Ironic, not to mention hypocritical.
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Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm starting to wonder if Fox News wasn't created by liberals to provide a convenient "Look at that over there!" out for any discussion.
Fox news can legally lie, so can any news (Score:5, Informative)
Fox news did show that news shows are not legally obligated to tell the truth http://www.foxbghsuit.com/ [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.
Re:Fox news can legally lie, so can any news (Score:4, Informative)
Idiot, that's not FOX news the cable channel but FOX channel 13 in Tampa Florida, a local TV station. You didn't read your own cite or else you're just spreading more lies.
Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Informative)
if you watch the liberal news and then watch FOX you can usually figure the truth is nowhere in the vicinity of either of them.
FTFY.
TV news is totally useless. The only "news" worth watching on television is The Daily Show, and only then because they serve as such an excellent reminder of why you should never watch any of the other ones.
Real news comes from the internet.
Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ironic, since most of the "news" on the Internet is just rehashes of news stories done by real journalists.
Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that "real journalists" do not exist on the internet. More and more that is the only place they exist. To some extent they are still employed by newspapers, but newspapers have almost universally begun posting all their stories on the internet.
I might except that some "real journalism" still happens on radio (mostly NPR), but NPR is also on the internet.
Also, this:
most of the "news" [] is just rehashes of news stories done by real journalists.
I mean what do you think the Associated Press is all about?
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
I often get confused when people talk about "liberal" this and "conservative" that. From my non-American perspective, I see so little difference between the two that I can't bring myself to acknowledge that there is a substantive difference.
What the two "sides" tend to do is report an issue and exaggerate a piece of minutia, a nuance, or some abstract principle. They then blow that one thing up out of all proportion and highlight specifically how it is different from "other side". Finally, they leave the viewer with the impression that if everyone doesn't agree on this tiny bit of minutia, the whole world will go to hell in a hand basket. You *must* oppose the other side with all your heart.
They intentionally create a distinction in order to separate the two sides and give an illusion of choice.
But I would caution that the internet is far from free of that meme. If anything it can be worse if all you read is opinion. The one advantage is that it can sometimes be easier to trace down facts in order to create your own opinions. But verifying the facts is not trivial.
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Informative)
American "liberal": authoritarian, pro-abortion rights, some limits on guns, thinks taxes are too low. Wants corporations to fill out paperwork before spewing pollution.
American "conservative": authoritarian, anti-abortion, no limits on guns ever, can't think of a good reason to tax anybody. Doesn't want corporations to fill out paperwork, period.
For perspective, the above was filtered through an anti-authoritarian American cynic and a beer or two.
HTH.
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MSNBC makes the old Soviet News service TASS look right wing. MSNBC is by far the most liberal of all American news broadcasters.
Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. He did exactly what he said that FOX News would have done. Ironic, not to mention hypocritical.
How exactly did he do that?
Did dynamo52 make some other, invalid comment, only to be exposed by FOX News, so now he's attacking them?
He contrasted what happened here with what he expected to happen had it been FOX News instead. He might be wrong (or not. I make no claim to know), but he's not hypocritical.
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Agreed. The moderation of these comments, as of 9:33 PM EST, is fairly sad.
Instead of holding the media to a higher standard, posters have digressed into "it's not as bad as Fox News"-style argument.
But I digress, this is the media we are talking about, which has often been summarized in one quote: "They call it a medium because it’s neither rare nor well done."
*puts on hard hat* Okay, I am ready for the inevitable down-moderation.
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Agreed. The moderation of these comments, as of 9:33 PM EST, is fairly sad.
I would have to (mostly) disagree with that.
Let's look at them one at a time:
The 1st comment (schlachter, 4, Funny) is kind of just taking up space. It's a mildly amusing observation that also happens to be a very early comment on the story. We all know those and the replies to them get much more attention than later comments.
The 2nd comment (dynamo52, 5 Insightful) starts off well, pointing out that while they may have screwed up, at least they're willing to admit it. Goes downhill a bit with a potshot
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Yes. He did exactly what he said that FOX News would have done. Ironic, not to mention hypocritical.
But Fox News didn't uncover the story. He said that Fox News would have had a coordinated attack to smear who ever brought it to light, and he didn't smear American Public Media's Marketplace... he smeared someone completely unrelated.
So, no. Not hypocritical.
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
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By doing so in the manner they are, they are making a point of journalistic integrity.
Integrity that left them when they didn't fact check the story in the first place.
From NPR:
"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. We reported that discrepancy in the original show. But with this week’s broadcast, we're letting the audience know that too many of the details about the people he says he met are in dispute for us to st
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The biggest problem here is mixing up journalism with theater. One needs to be factual, the other not so much.
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
didn't fact check the story in the first place
Explicitly untrue. They did make an effort at fact-checking, and noted the one exageration they successfully detected, but they let it slide when Daisey wouldn't give them accurate contact information for his interpreter, rather than killing the story.
It was a judgement call, and they were wrong, but at least they're doing the right thing in followup.
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Informative)
I do not see a shred of responsibility on the part of TAL. They were caught with a falsified show segment, based on lies and inadequately vetted, easily discredited, and could ONLY have retracted it and blamed eveyrone else, or forfeited their reputation in presenting anything as either fact-based or journalistic.
Wow. I hate to see what you think should happen when news stories are actual fabrications, rather than a medium through which someone managed to slip a lie that is subtle and actually quite hard to prove. Seriously, exactly how much fact checking do you expect someone to do when someone presents them with news? The amount that you imply should happen would basically make the initial news story irrelevant, because it would have been completely rebuilt from scratch during the fact checking. Fact checking is the verification of the main points of a story, along with the verification that the main actors in the story do not actively deny what is being described.
It doesn't mean that every statement gets independently vetted.
From what I can tell, the story consisted of several interviews, and one of the interviewers decided to lie during the interview. Basic checking wasn't able to conclusively prove certain statements to be lies, so they were presented as is during the broadcast. Furthermore, the parts where basic fact checking did uncover inconsistencies, the interviewee in question was challenged on it, and he persisted.
All in all, this is some pretty solid reporting. Not to mention that the retraction was done through research they conducted on their own.
Really, if you think that this is shoddy reporting worthy to be ignored on principle, you are either not reading any news whatsoever anywhere at anytime, or you have some serious blinders on.
Not NPR (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Not NPR (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean the show is funded by NPR any more than if a McDonald's employee sells me a necklace it would mean McDonald's is in the jewlery business.
Re:Not NPR (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I'm a shill, I've been shilling for NPR from slashdot for 15 years.
That just means that WBEZ broadcasts some shows which were produced by NPR, such as All Things Considered. They pay NPR quite heavily for the right to broadcast NPR produced and/or distributed shows.
My guess is that your local newspaper prints articles by UPI, AP and Reuters, that makes them an affiliate of these syndicators. However when they want to syndicate their own work, they chose one syndicator who takes care of distributing their content to newspapers around the world. Say your newspapers uses UPI, should I blame the AP when an article written by your newspaper gets it wrong?
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Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Informative)
As has been noted elsewhere, the program is not from NPR; it's from Chicago Public Media (and is distributed by Public Radio International).
And as a bonus, who do you think caught the "massive lie"? Surely it was one of the great conservative media outlets, looking for an opportunity to discredit the liberals? No, it was a correspondent from another public radio group, American Public Media.
No media group is perfect, but one that is willing to publicize their errors, admit to them, and publicly retract a story with major factual errors is far above a media outlet who regularly blurs the line between their opinion shows (that never live up to journalistic standards of truth and fact-checking) and their factual news shows (that often don't live up to journalistic standards either). And I'm not just poking at Fox here; there are outlets on both sides that are awful. Fox is just one of the biggest, worst offenders.
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Informative)
NPR gets caught publishing a massive lie by an anti-corporation hipster, and you respond by attacking Fox News?
NPR is publicly apologizing for being wrong. Fox news went to court to defend their right to lie and still call it news. So, yes, that is reasonable given their respective histories. One would have to be naive to hold NPR and Fox as equals. It's certainly not borne out by their viewers. NPR viewers were better informed than the average citizen, while Fox news viewers are significantly less informed than the average, when it came to the Iraq war and the Neocon reasons we were going there. [worldpublicopinion.org] Fox pushed us into a war we didn't need.
And not for nothing, but there's nothing wrong with being anti-corporation. Hipster, yes.
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Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Informative)
Dan Rather - Stepped down after a story, which was true, but had a single letter that was falsified, came to light.
TLA - publicly and loudly retracts, and does a detailed report on what was inaccurate, to set the record straight. Still gets attacked for showing more integrity than any other news outlet has.. well, done in recent history, not sure about ever.
Fox "News" - We never see any stories on Slashdot, or the major networks, about Fox retracting a story, despite the fact that they make up a ton of shit. Daily. They went to court to FIGHT for the right to fabricate, FFS. So how is it relevant? How do you think? Insightful? You're a troll, sir.
It's just as well we don't have major sites, including Slashdot, reporting on every fabrication that Fox puts out. Jesus, we'd never see anything else in our RSS feeds.
Re:This American Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
"A single letter falsified"...don't you think thats minimizing a bit? That single letter was the basis of the story and a sole documentation upon which a political hatchet job was based.
coordinated attack... (Score:2, Flamebait)
I think you mean that FOX would launch a coordinated attack on Obama and the Democrats....regardless of who brought the truth to light. :)
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I'm no fan of Fox News...in fact, I think that if Fox Sports covered sports the way Fox News covers politics, they'd have Michael Jordan winning the Stanley Cup in straight sets against Lindsay Lohan.
I love it! You mention two people and two sports yet none of the combinations have anything in common.
You know and I know that there will be no suit from Apple. Apple has countered this and the New York Times article by giving ABC News access to the factories. Apple is serious about correcting the problems in the factories and will get it done. Give them time.
Re:This American Lie (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is serious about correcting the problems in the factories and will get it done. Give them time.
Apple has nothing to lose if the issue gains such prominence that their competition is forced to do the same.
As much as I enjoy buying from outlets like dealextreme which almost certainly run on slavery (have you seen their prices? ugh. I know I sound like an ad but seriously, there's whippin' behind all that shit) it would be great if they were cut off so we were forced to buy stuff from people who hired people for a fair, living wage, and didn't treat them worse than we're allowed to treat animals in this country.
Jobs didn't "have" a Gulfstream (Score:2)
And I know plenty of middle class people who have fought their cities for building permits. Nice nitpick, though.
Refreshing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Refreshing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Refreshing (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. To think, that a media outlet would have the balls to admit they were wrong, then explain how they made the mistake. That is rare these days...
Well, as they note on NPR, the stories checked out, and were real events... it just turns out that Daisey didn't personally witness them.
It's like getting all worked up over a story that is based on real events, and it's like "good! but remember, it's still fictionalized..." They took a theater act and turned it into a journal piece without any augmentation to ensure that viewers understood that while these events were true, they were being dramatized.
Re:Refreshing (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds like, "We got it wrong," to me.
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Re:Refreshing (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess the modern way of proving yourself as a respectable organization is to have the balls to own up to those mistakes....
...and make an honest effort to correct and/or compensate for them.
As a grandfather I can attest that it is also the old fashion way, and now that I have you trapped on my lawn I'm going to punish you by giving you my long winded opinion on the matter (while my bath robe flaps about in the breeze just enough to make you uncomfortable).
Anyone who shows genuine remorse for a mistake (such as stepping on my lawn) gets a +1:respect from me, (in real terms that means I will consider suppressing the flapping of my bathrobe while conversing with them). It's not absolution for irresponsibility or carelessness but it is a very reliable indicator that it was a genuine mistake rather than a mallicious act or an irresponsible attitude. The alternative hit and run behavoiur does nothing but compound the damage of a mistake which is the basic reason hit and run car accidents are so reviled by the public and so harshly punished by the law. OTOH, hit and run journalsism under the guise of "opinion" (eg: Andrew Bolt) seems to be not only tolerated by society, but more handsomely rewarded by it, and it has been that way since the dead sea was feeling a bit off colour.( I danced on the lawn of the "haunted house" when I was a kid, and was a legend at lunchtime for doing it)
This retraction is as good as journalistic ethics gets. TAL fucked up, and when this was pointed out to them they immediately sought to correct the record, they, like Apple, are victims that played some part in their own "downfall" here. As an Aussie I know virtually nothing about TAL other than the name, in fact I thought it was a 1950's magazine, but whatever/whoever they are, they deserve the upmost respect in this instance for willingly risking their own reputation in an attempt to set the record straight. To do otherwise turns an honest mistake into recklessly causing damage to Apple's reputaion. (Had you walked down the path and knocked on my door I most likely would have retrived your schoolbag from my lawn without a fuss, and consequently my dogs would not be eating your homework right now)
Of course the reputation of the "showman" who told tall tales about his adventure is in the toilet, and sadly it took his real story on third world working conditions with it. His actions are almost the exact opposite of TAL. He had ample oportunity to set the record straight, but he chose to continue the "showmanship". That choice is the point where he started lying to TAL for the purpose of self-glorification (or self-enrichment) and is therefore the moral vilian in all this. (I suspect you're lying about the schoolbag and just wanted to impress your mates by dancing on my lawn).
Now get off my lawn and go tell your teacher that a dog ate your homework. If the teacher broadcasts your stroy by giving you detention you'll also get a full 15 minuites of fame, tomorrow, during lunch.
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What gets me is Daisey's acknowledgement that he's not a journalist and that he wasn't doing journalism and was doing theater instead. This same sort of attitude has shown up a few times on the WNYC radio show On The Media, where the person interviewed brushes off fabrications with the assertion that it was just theater or entertainment.
So what's the deal with all these actors just making stuff up and presenting it as the truth, or pretending to be journalists and later denying that they really are? Are t
Re:Refreshing (Score:5, Informative)
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Exactly. Great show, and those episodes about the crisis are amazing. It's incredible how people say all kinds of crap about the crisis without acknowledging (or perhaps realizing) what was really happening at various levels around the time the crisis hit.
They also did another interesting episode later on talking to Wall Street people to see if they had any regrets over causing the crisis or receiving the bailouts.
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They also did a piece a week or so ago about Grover Norquist that frankly did a much better job of making his views look like a good idea than he normally does himself.
Planet Money (Score:5, Informative)
The TAL pieces on the economy are produced by NPR's Planet Money [npr.org] 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.
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They teamed up with Planet Money for that piece and some others. Most of the time though This American Life does not present itself as news or investigative journalism but usually just has what some would call "human interest" or light stories. Ie, people who tell their own stories (funny or tragic) and have even presented some fiction (after stating up front that it was fiction). They don't have a journalism team. So teaming with Planet Money has gotten some more interesting economy oriented stories on
Theater (Score:4, Insightful)
...as opposed to what we see in the media every day...(?)
Re:Theater (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the Rush Limbaugh defense. "I just make absurd comments in order to illustrate my points."
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A perfect story for them (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A perfect story for them (Score:5, Funny)
I'm reminded of the Car Talk Christmas special, where they did there rendition of A Christmas Carol with various public radio personalities in the various rolls. Ira Glass ended up being Tiny Tim, who was described as dying from "chronic tragic sincerity syndrome".
Integrity in Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Truth... (Score:3, Interesting)
China bashing is all in vogue these days, since they are supposed to be the next superpower, which doesn't bode well with the current superpower that is the U.S. But realistically, neither side is pure evil, or for that matter, completely innocent. The Chinese are people like you and me, capable of things both good and bad.
Moral of the story: when deciphering all the spin in the media, truth is always somewhere in the middle.
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Moral of the story: when deciphering all the spin in the media, truth is always somewhere in the middle.
I used to espouse this as well, but I'm beginning to realize even this caveat is too simple.
After following some war coverage, I realized that the truth is not always somewhere in the middle. There are cases where story A says something like "10 Taliban fighters were killed, and 2 American's were wounded" and story B says "20 unarmed women and children were killed" and the truth is probably not in the middle. One of the two sides is completely lying.
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The truth is probably still somewhere in the middle there. It's entirely possible that in one skirmish 10 Taliban soldiers could be killed, 2 American soldiers wounded and 20 unarmed women and children killed as well.
But the story is essentially true (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:But the story is essentially true (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:But the story is essentially true (Score:5, Informative)
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.
They forgot about the children (Score:2)
The program forgot to mention that each iPad and iPhone is dipped in blood extracted from Chinese infants then wiped clean with the spittle from Foxconn executives before shipment.
Besides that, the program was totally accurate in all respects.
Re:But the story is essentially true (Score:5, Informative)
Underage workers were also only rumors.
Apple's own audits show (PDF) [apple.com] the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers.
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Apple's own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers.
There is just a slight matter of scale here. Apple found evidence that several companies had hired employees when they were underage. In the year before, one company was responsible for more than half of these cases, and that company lost their contract with Apple. Since then, the number of cases has gone down. And the reason that people are employed while too young is that they apply for these jobs and someone doesn't check carefully enough. If anyone figured out they were too young, they wouldn't have bee
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Reducing a story to a single individual is a time-honored journalistic tradition. It puts a face on the issue to which your audience can relate.
Creating a hypothetical individual in order to demonstrate the problem is also a time-honored journalistic tradition, and fine just as long as you say you're doing it. "Take Joe, a typical, hypothetical worker..."
Creating a fictional individual and pretending he's real is also a journalistic tradition... that tends to get one fired. Especially when you do a whole se
Re:But the story is essentially true (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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If you want to change the labor laws in China do so, but Apple is hardly the only company working with Foxconn, and by all accounts they do a much better job of verifying that overseas suppliers comply with their rules regarding work
Re:But the story is essentially true (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Link to the retracted episode (Score:3, Informative)
The page [thisamericanlife.org] about the retracted episode on the site is not linking to the audio of the show like they do for every other episode.
However, the well-documented trick still works, so if you want to listen to it you can do so here [thisamericanlife.org].
I think the URL is supposed to be NPR's way of letting you know they're on to you.
This deserves a rash... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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."
Exactly. It's just provided ammunition for the people who want to preemptively dismiss all the legitimate complaints regarding third-world working conditions.
It's similar to how people have used Al Gore's over-the-top claims about hurricanes to poo-poo all global warming data.
Apple Applying Pressure (Score:3, Informative)
So the event happened - workers poisoned by n-hexane - he just didn't visit that factor and that's the big lie? Seriously.
Read the series of New York Times articles or are those fabricated too.
Yeah kill the messenger....
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
According "an incident like this". Two important things here: singular as in one incident documented and like as in the one person may have been gotten a rash from a hole in protective gear. The thing is I don't know and neither do you, but the lie may be much more than location.
Theater (Score:2)
Daisey says, according to the press release. "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."
Sounds like the Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl excuse when he was caught in a bald faced lie on the floor of the Senate: his remark “was not intended to be a factual statement.” Just another bald faced liar who thinks lies are OK.
Its' about time. (Score:2)
It's been a while since we've seen a Foxconn story around here. No, I'm not being sarcastic. Since the focus is on Apple, the story died down, just waiting for a story like this to come along. Dead story == Workers not getting relief.
So can we finally start raking the numerous other companies that are using Foxconn over the coals already?
Not sure how to feel. (Score:2)
The overall idea presented in the story, that you should care about what's going on in the new global economy, is correct. It seems that the stories he got from actually interviewing workers were not, in his mind, compelling enough to move people to action. Most of the real stories are things that happen here: people working overtime, people who are underpaid, repetitive stress injury, worker accidents and the like.
So he made up some plausable sounding stories to make his point. It's not false in spirit, bu
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So he made up some plausable sounding stories to make his point. It's not false in spirit, but he had to present it as literal truth for people to take it seriously.
Well, Mr. Daisey apparently attempted to humanize his story, but in a twist, the human in the story is him, but it isn't a news story, it's now just a poor retelling of the "boy who cried wolf" fable...
In the attempt to humanize the (alleged) victims of this particular industrial march, he steps over the line and dehumanizes his audience as he thinks he knows what is best for them and must "hide" the truth. It is a tragedy that many people often can't see that problem before they take these kind of steps.
More! (Score:2)
I'd like to hear from the hundreds of slack journalists that passed on the original story as truth. I know that things are not great in many countries, cheap labor is the reason that they build stuff there and not anywhere else, maybe they should look at some of the sweat shops in the US and other countries too.
Hatchet job (Score:3)
So I can keep my new iPad? (Score:3)
YES!!!!
Tonights episode... (Score:2)
Tonight's episode of This American Life is brought to you buy Apple...
Video of Foxconn from 2010 told different story (Score:3)
You've been played by Apple and Foxconn (Score:3, Interesting)
At the very bottom of the story on the retraction, there is a link to a sourced New York Times story, which is nearly as damning as the retracted one. This is called "burying the lede," and it is biased reporting.
Reportedly, the TAL correction also confirmed most of what Daisey claimed; he wasn't there, but the stories turn out to be true after all. The TAL broadcast will be available for download on Sunday
Here's the link to the NYT story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html [nytimes.com]
This is were the TAL correction will be available:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction [thisamericanlife.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Neither one is a "reality" show - which are, as you say, not factual.
Re: (Score:2)
Who drowned?
Re: (Score:2)
James May, I believe.
Re: (Score:3)
This American Life isn't a news program, in fact they specifically point this out if you go to their web page. The best way to describe TAL in a sentence is a program that presents a series of stories (I'd call them essays) around some theme for the purpose of entertaining the listener. Some of the stories are based factual information, but others are total fiction.
Re: (Score:3)
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot has been lacking in fact checking
What are you talking about? Slashdot is one huge hive of fact checkers - we get Karma if we can debunk the original post ffs!
Re: (Score:2)
More like they heard what they wanted to hear.
Re: (Score:2)
Oddly enough I never heard of the original story or any of the fabricated details, yet news that it was a fake is all over the web. Apple fans too eager to believe that it may all be a hoax?
Yes, Apple fans, including the 206 hedge funds (and various other institutions, including even governments of some countries now) that own Apple stock. Considering that Apple now is bigger than the entire US retail sector, it can not be allowed to lose. Or at least not yet.
Re:Shed the guilt, fast! (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [marketplace.org] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
"may be a hoax?"
There's no "may be." Dude made stuff up. He admits it. He did it because it makes great theatre!
Re: (Score:3)
Martians invading New Jersey is great theater. Pretending to be a journalist uncovering secrets of Foxconn is just lying. Orson Welles did not go for months letting people believe it was all true, but Mike Daisey did nothing to correct people when they believed his work of fiction. Maybe some of what he saw was true but now ALL of his story is subject to doubt. Truthiness is not the same as truth.
TAL has nothing to do with NPR (Score:2)
It is produced by WBEZ (which itself broadcasts NPR distributed shows, such as Car Talk, but has to pay NPR for their broadcast), and distributed by PRI (Public Radio International, a direct competitor to NPR).
Re:My cynical nature (Score:4, Insightful)
Occam's razor: Apple managed to bully a lot of Chinese nationals into towing their corporate line, force NPR to retract its story and get Daisy to say it was all just theater OR Daisy's just another self-aggrandizing little shit who's trying to surf the Apple wave to success ? Second one seems simpler to me.
Re: (Score:3)
They want to sell papers. Apple stories sell papers. Liberal guilt stories sell papers. A reason to feel smug and get your daily 5 minutes of indignant outrage sells papers. This kind of story sells A LOT of papers.