Foxconn "Glad That Mike Daisey's Lies Were Exposed" 332
theodp writes "Foxconn Technology Group, Apple's largest supplier and the target of allegations of poor work conditions, welcomed a retraction of a This American Life radio program episode it said was based on lies. 'I am happy that the truth prevails, I am glad that Mike Daisey's lies were exposed,' Louis Woo, a spokesman for Taipei-based Foxconn said. 'People will have the impression that Foxconn is a bad company,' Woo added, 'so I hope they will come and find out for themselves'. Foxconn also said that it has 'no plans to take legal action.'"
I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't the problem here not that what Daisey reported was false, but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with? Of course from a journalistic standpoint that is awful but it is now sweeping these problems under the rug.
Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source.
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What would difference it would make if this was real? Apple looking for another producer? Apple fanbois suddenly starting to believe that their beloved company isn't all controled peace and happiness?
Get real, that's China. And how someone pointed out, things like these have been going for years, and not only for Apple. And as long as they will produce stuff cheapily and we will be happy to buy it - it won't change a thing. They still be billions piss poor people.
Unless China produced stuff gets heavy tarri
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think that tariffs will help specifically, but if China would stop forcing an exchange rate with their currency then the problem would, to an extent, fix itself as China's currency becomes more expensive.
What we really need to do, IMHO, is to recognize the somewhat confrontational relationship we actually have with China, and to stop sending proprietary processes to China for manufacture. That might mean that China still makes the plastics and the PCB, but the parts get shipped here for soldering and final assembly. The best way to reduce the speed of knockoff copying is to not engage in manufacture in a place that essentially encourages knockoff copying. Sure, it'll still happen, but it'll take longer, especially when new devices eventually come out where the processes have changed and can't be instantly replicated in that environment.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference it can make and has made is that Apple has consistently responded to pressure to be more open about its labor practices, and they have enough economic weight to throw around to make real (but perhaps not fundamental) change in at least their supply chain—which is substantial on its own—but even probably in the electronics market overall.
Apple doesn't necessarily need to leave Foxconn (or any other supplier) to make them change their labor policies; the pressure of audits with accountability can go a long way, under enough social pressure. And say what you want about Apple's fanatic following, it certainly exists, but it also has a demographic tendency to be more inclined to apply pressure on labor abuse.
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It would be nice if we could just snap our fingers, and suddenly everyone would have great working conditions, and enough money to live well on.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. A society has to work its way up. And companies like Foxconn are the the forefront of that. They pay better and have better working conditions than the average. Once enough people reach a higher standard of living, they can start demanding more, and so on.
By attacking the ones that offer the better situation for workers, you
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is, of course, nonsense. What is holding the entire process back is greed.
Apple makes large margins on the sales of iProducts. If they were interested, they could pass some, not even a lot, of that back to their suppliers and conditions there would improve. But they do not; they keep those margins, which are as large as they are precisely because they pay their suppliers as little as possible.
These people are in poor working conditions, not because it is inevitable, but because it is cheap.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Insightful)
...they could pass some, not even a lot, of that back to their suppliers and conditions there would improve...
That is assuming that the suppliers would then pass that money on to their workers. But why would they do that? Is it because only Apple is a greedy corporation, whose aim is to make money, and all other companies (suppliers) are benevolent, aiming only to improve conditions for their workers?
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I think people miss that point... the foxconn employees work for foxconn, not apple. Apple pays foxconn what foxconn negotiated.
Foxconn could turn around and ask for more when the contract is up so that it could pay it's workers more, but then some other company would likely outbid them.
Actually, I'm not sure about that. There have been multiple articles pointing out that Foxconn is basically the place that can do what Apple needs at the moment. None of the other companies in China have the kind of muscle behind them to meet Apple's (rather demanding) standards.
Not to say that could never change, but for now, it sounds like Foxconn and Apple have each other right where they want each other.
Dan Aris
Americans are essentially competing against slaves (Score:5, Informative)
A point that is not often addressed in public discourse is that Americans have been surrendering rights just to keep their jobs in the face of demands by corporate American. Corporate America is using slave labor in China as leverage to demand and acquire concessions from workers and to bust unions here. Once we call it what it is in the mainstream press, we might see greater awareness in the general population.
"Oh, wait. When I buy a phone, be it Android, Apple or *gasp* Microsoft, I'm supporting slavery. That slavery is being used against me."
This has coincidentally been accelerating for the last 30 years. 30 years? Around 30 years ago we saw the start of:
* The rise of intellectual property
* The lowest income tax rates in history
* The acceleration of the outsourcing of labor to China, Vietnam and Thailand.
* The acceleration of the continual decimation of the middle class.
I'm sure there is more, but you get the picture. Slavery is a great way to cause a depression.
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Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly... These are people who are leaving impoverished villages and lining up at places like Foxconn, fighting tooth and nail to get a job there. Their kids will go to school and get a chance to become more than their factory-line worker parents. We have no right to do anything unless people are being forced against their will and they are not...
Fact is that a young person starting a job at Foxconn, doing lots of overtime, saving money by sleeping in a cheep dorm, can save up an awful lot of money in a years time. I'm sure working at McDonalds in the USA is nicer than working at Foxconn. If you are a young person in the USA who wants to become a lawyer, for how long would you have to work at McDonalds to save enough money to finance this? If you are a young person in China, how long would you have to work at Foxconn?
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
They're doing exactly the same thing that our own ancestors did in the 18th century when the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear. They went and worked in deplorable conditions (far worse than anything at Foxconn) in the hopes of creating a better life for their children. It took a while, and ultimately governments were forced to get involved and put limits on hours per day, child labor and so forth, but in the end, by the middle of the 19th century you began to see the middle class forming, and it was the middle class that ultimately began imposing its will on the political classes.
I don't think there's a way around this. I don't think there's a way to go from agrarian society straight into industrial society. The Soviets and the Chinese tried it, and by and large it failed (think Great Leap Forward here, probably responsible for more deaths than any other single policy in human history). The way it's happening in China is, to one extent or another, exactly how it happened elsewhere. At some point, doubtless, the scales will tip and the middle class in China will want the political power that is commensurate to their economic power.
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This is where the economists all chime in sa
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The global population is increasing exponentially, so unless global economic growth grows as rapidly or more rapidly
This has been happening globally since 1950. I don't know why 60 years of economic growth faster than population growth gets ignored, but it does.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW, freeing the slaves was never a bad idea, but many freed slaves suffered horribly after emancipation. Not that their living conditions were that great before hand, but after the Civil War there were many known cases of entire communities of plantation owners who hired freed slaves on the condition that the freed slaves would be paid after the harvest. But after the harvest, instead of paying what they promised, the ex-masters drove the workers off their land by force and it is believed that thousands starved to death during this time.
And in the case of China, if the "free world" were to ban Chinese imports, China would fall into a severe depression. Unemployed workers would be very angry, as would the Chinese government. There's a slim chance this could lead to a general uprising that could lead to democracy, but more likely is that an over populated and well armed China with nothing to lose would absorb the unemployed men of fighting age into their armed forces, direct the anger of their masses toward the West, and obtain by military force what they could not obtain through commerce. Even in full scale war, such as an invasion of Japan and Taiwan, coupled with supporting N. Korea against the South, the US would likely not be the first to strike with nuclear weapons. And with an expanding military that has been growing more technologically adept, China probably would not see any reason to use their own nuclear weapons unless their home territory came under heavy bombing or invasion.
As an anecdote to support my position, during WWII the WMD of the time was poison gas, which both the Allied and Axis powers possessed in significant quantities, yet neither side resorted to using gas in spite of the scale and devastation of the war. So I don't believe that America's nuclear deterrence would be enough to prevent a conventional war with China.
So, the only option left for those of us who care about human rights and the treatment of workers who make the goods we consume, is we need to proactively seek out products that are manufactured and marketed in an ethical manner. Just as "organic" has become trendy to the point that well-to-do consumers will pay three or four times as much money for pesticide free vegetables, we need to make ethical and sustainable business practices just as "trendy". Kind of like the parable of the contest between the wind and the sun to see who could take the jacket off from a pedestrian. The wind blew harder and harder, but could not blow it off, but the sun just stood still and effortlessly warmed the path of the pedestrian until the pedestrian decided to take off his jacket. In time perhaps "ethically and sustainably manufactured in China" will be the new trendy "organic" label that Yuppies will wear with pride.
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Just as "organic" has become trendy to the point that well-to-do consumers will pay three or four times as much money for pesticide free vegetables, we need to make ethical and sustainable business practices just as "trendy".
This is already "trendy". See Starbucks "Fair-Trade" coffee. It's a bit more difficult when you deal with complex electronic devices. If I buy an iPad, knowing that Apple treats their employees well -- I am largely ignorant of how Apple's suppliers (i.e. FoxConn) treat their employees. And even now that we know how Foxconn treats their employees, how do we know how ethical *their* suppliers and their supplier's suppliers are? So, FoxConn pays their guys to assemble the iPad -- but it contains a touch-s
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Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
(Note: I am neither of the AC ancestors, but I'm pretty sure I understand their position, so I'll try to explain it regardless)
The critical difference here is that those Chinese workers are /not/ slaves. They are not forced into taking jobs at foxconn; they take these positions voluntarily, just like people in western countries do, because they think it's a favorable trade for them.
Why do they do this? Because as bad as the working conditions and pay at companies like Foxconn are by western standards, they are very competitive compared to the local alternatives. This point is crucial: Foxconn are not exploiting people in the sense that all else being equal, the people who work for them would be better off just not doing so.
You can make an argument that people living in sufficient poverty to make such a deal favorable is a terrible thing, and I'd agree with that. However, destroying Foxconn's business model by preventing them from selling to western countries does nothing directly to fix these people's poverty; in fact it makes it worse, by reducing the pool of jobs available to them (and not just randomly reducing it; you're taking away some of the best jobs in the pool!).
As an analogy, think of how you'd react if people in a hypothetical country that's even more wealthy than your's decided that your working conditions are far too horrible for your pay, and somehow stopped jobs like the one you have right from being offered anymore, resulting in you having to choose a worse job instead. Would that make your life better? Would you be happy about it? It's the same thing here.
The above is how the simple economic argument goes. Real economies and societies are complicated, of course, and there's several vectors by which driving Foxconn out of business oculd potentially improve the situation for common workers in China. But those aren't clear to me (and aren't clear to various other people who've looked at the issue) - the direct, obvious and robust effect is strongly negative. If you're going to argue that there are other effects compensating for it, it would be good to present your reasoning or link to other people arguing for the above reasoning being incorrect.
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Places like Foxconn are what forced Unions into existence and labor laws to come into place.
Paying rent to the company and being forced to buy from the company store IS a form of slavery, Sorry you are too uneducated to see that, or you are just plain old evil and think it's a wonderful thing. The poor conditions in the factory are because the company owners are such greedy assholes that it's cheaper to kill workers than make it a safe place to work. They have far higher profit margins that way. If we
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ever since the spinoff of AMD's fabrication plants in early 2009, GlobalFoundries has been responsible for producing AMD's processors.
GlobalFoundries' main microprocessor manufacturing facilities are located in Dresden, Germany. Additionally, highly integrated microprocessors are manufactured in Taiwan made by third-party manufacturers under strict license from AMD. Between 2003 and 2005, they constructed a second manufacturing plant (300 mm 90 nm process SOI) in the same complex in order to increase the nu
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Insightful)
Paying rent to the company and being forced to buy from the company store IS a form of slavery, Sorry you are too uneducated to see that, or you are just plain old evil and think it's a wonderful thing.
I think you're thinking of the appalachian coal mines in the US from the late 1800's to mid 1900's. Those were isolated places. Rural. Nothing close by. But, this [wikipedia.org] is where the largest Foxconn facility is. It's part of this [wikipedia.org]. Population of over 10 million people. Good luck forcing people to buy from the company store in a place like this.
You may lot like the working conditions, and it is true that they're not ideal, but calling it slavery is simply not true. People want to work there, which is pretty much the exact definition of "not slavery".
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Sorry, but slaves also "want" to be enslaved and work their asses off when presented with the alternative of being dead. Choosing between two really horrible things does not automatically mean the one they chose is what they really want.
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Sorry, but slaves also "want" to be enslaved and work their asses off when presented with the alternative of being dead. Choosing between two really horrible things does not automatically mean the one they chose is what they really want.
Life is full of compromise. You think I like dragging my ass out of bed and going to work in the morning? I like my job, but I'd still rather hang out on the beach and eat sushi everyday. I guess I could just hang out on the beach, but that's not gonna get me my sushi money, is it?
People want these manufacturing jobs because compared to every other job that's available to them, they're fantastic. You can say that's not what they really want, but people are lined up around the block trying to get these j
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"Paying rent to the company and being forced to buy from the company store IS a form of slavery"
Well, you can make out that anything is a form of slavery if you're willing to redefine what slavery means. I would prefer a more useful definition of the term, one that encompasses what slavery actually is, rather than extending the definition to anyone who has to work for a living. I might say that the hypothetical US worker being paid $37/hour to build ipads is also a slave - because, why only $37? And I'd be
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> Paying rent to the company and being forced to buy from the company store IS a form of slavery
There is no slavery. Workers have a right to enter, and they have a right to leave. Guess what, some people actually prefer having the security of a meal every day to working 16 hours a day and being subject to the whims of the harvest on the field.
And labor laws and unions are really not as useful as you think. If you look at the historical record of what wage laborers' conditions have been over the centuries
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Interesting)
I see...no culpability by a totalitarian government here...
1 - Make life conditions horrible for population
2 - Offer sightly less horrible conditions in factory
3 - ???
4 - Profit, and repeat step 1
I keep seeing this argument pop up, "hey, at least its better then the farm" like it is a good moral position. In this example, China does not seem to interested in improving the lifestyle of their rural population for it would undercut a steady supply of workers in the factory. The human becomes part of the machine and like any part, when it goes bad, just replace for we have a large inventory in stock.
That is how your argument reads under the BS about its better then the alternative. I imagine that the government would not want to consider more humane, western labor laws for two reasons, there would be larges amount of people dropping their agro tools and flocking to cities for work, but higher wages, less work time, safer conditions means that companies have to pay more for labor and thus take off for "greener" pastures in less enlightened countries. Now what do you do will all those people that has hopes for a job.
Foxconn will continue to exist, because we feed the machine by buying stuff made there, and because the government needs Foxconn to help keep the populous if not happy, at least quiescent with the idea of a better life.
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exactly exactly exactly.
sustenance living is impossible when a big factory comes to town and shits on your farmland and pollutes your water supply, as is happening all over china. so unregulated industry destroys the way of life for millions of people, and they have no choice but to go work in that factory.
it is fucking tragic.
it is even MORE tragic that privileged americans completely understand this, but are too embarrassed to own it, and fight to deny it.
even more, more (?) tragic, i'm sure every electr
Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
sustenance living is impossible when a big factory comes to town and shits on your farmland and pollutes your water supply, as is happening all over china. so unregulated industry destroys the way of life for millions of people, and they have no choice but to go work in that factory.
That...actually doesn't happen very much. The factories tend to be concentrated in areas like Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Dongguan. Sure, there were farms in some of these areas years back, but by and large, they've been urban for a while. And there's a lot of China that's still rural, where the factories don't even want to go. There's just no profit in it.
So, yeah, if you happen to be one of the few hundred—or even few thousand—farmers whose land was taken over or polluted by the factories, then that sucks, and I doubt they received much compensation, because, y'know, mostly-totalitarian regime and all that. But don't forget that that's only 0.00001%-0.0001% of the population. It's hardly a careful, concerted effort to drive people away from subsistence agriculture towards factory life.
And you know what? They don't need any such effort, because the Chinese people are flocking to factory life as fast as they can possibly manage. Subsistence agriculture sucks.
Dan Aris
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
The critical difference here is that those Chinese workers are /not/ slaves. They are not forced into taking jobs at foxconn; they take these positions voluntarily, just like people in western countries do, because they think it's a favorable trade for them.
I understand this and the rest of your post, but they are about as close to getting to slaves as they can be. A lot of them are there because they literally have no chance at a better life without having to go through all the insane hours at Foxconn.
Your first sentence alone could be used in a similar way: "the slaves aren't running away from the fields or complaining much lately, so they must really like it here!" No, they're there because they really do not have much of a choice. I mean, they do in a technical sense. I'm sure they could leave and go back to the countryside to live in a hovel with a dirt floor and absolutely 0 contact with the outside world. That's better than nothing, right?
Argh, the logical leaps that some of us make to assuage our guilt about the shit ways people are treated in other countries! The ones who make our shiny gadgets, children's toys, and a vast majority of the stuff we use everyday, no less!
And yes, I am full well aware that I am using something also made somewhere in China or Southeast Asia. If I had a "buy American" option for electronics I'd take it, although right now I'm killing time at a public library so I don't have much in the way of choice on what sort of computer I use.
Right now the only thing I can really reliably and consistantly buy American are cigarettes and socks.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Insightful)
Very insightful post. I agree that Apple and Foxconn are symptoms of the problems in China than the cause of them.
I would liken it to somebody having a broken arm and complaining of pain, so to fix the problem you amputate the arm. No more pain, but then the patient doesn't even have an arm anymore.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Informative)
I believe the words you're looking for is called, Indentured Servitude [wikipedia.org]. No, its not exactly slavery but it really is. The distinction is one of splitting hairs. The bottom line is that no one is forcing them into these conditions but its not much better than slavery.
Except that what you claim is total nonsense. Foxconn pays wages that are quite a bit above average. The cost of living is very low, a place in the dormitories costs per month about one day's wages, meals are not much more. People come from their village, work hard for a year and save their money, and go back to their village as rich people (compared to what anyone else in the village has).
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Informative)
> but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with
No.
"The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show."
Basically he stated that all of the "bad stories" were simply made up.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
The stories, yes. The actual topics, no.
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The distortion of the facts takes away from the topics as Foxconn and anyone else can say he lied about that too.
For instance, underage workers is a serious concern. He represented that he saw underage workers where the correction says that underage workers were rare. If you are interested in this topic, his report would lead you to the false conclusion that underage workers were a problem when they are not. The reality would suggest that some underage workers do slip through the system and Foxconn nee
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Hexane poisoning.
Which did not happen at Foxconn, FYI.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:4, Interesting)
Why did you neglect to mention that Wintek also works for Apple?
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Informative)
I think that it would be more accurate to say, that Daisey took bits and pieces of various real stories, all of them reported by actual journalists, put these details in rearranged form into a fictionalized monologue, and that became a TAL segment.
That's not what happened. First, where are the "real stories"? Second, he added in very significant ways. So instead of a few cases where someone was hired who was too young, his story that all you have to do is wait at the entrance of the Foxconn factory and you will see lots and lots of 12, 13 and 14 year old children. And instead of people being poisoned, going to hospital, recovering and going back to work, he changed it to people being poisoned and having their health permanently destroyed to the point where they couldn't even lift up a glass.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Interesting)
At no time in The Jungle does Upton Sinclair write "I, Upton Sinclair, saw..." And while much of the incidentals in The Jungle are based on real things that happened, you'd be in a lot of trouble if you tried to use The Jungle as evidence to indict anybody. Upton Sinclair never accused a living person of a criminal act in The Jungle, but Daisey makes several falsifiable claims alleging real crimes by real people against real victims.
Upton Sinclair also never represented his work as an account of actual people in an actual situation, which Mr. Daisey repeatedly did to the TAL producers.
"Muckraking," such as it is, still requires that real claims come with real evidence. Modern examples like Michael Moore's or Kirby Dick's works are content to jump back and forth between factual claims, innuendos, and moral appeals, but what makes it "muckraking" is that they never affirmatively lie. They might edit out things against their agenda, they might represented a sequence of events in such a way as to maximize emotional response, they may choose their subjects in such a way that slants their presentation of the truth.
But they never tell you the sky is green, because to them such species of claims shouldn't be necessary. When Mike Daisey said the guy with the claw hand was injured making Apple products, he was telling us the sky was green. His stories in the end aren't even about China or technology manufacturing, they're just a narrative about guilt and his emotional response to globalization, and a certain sort of liberal NPR listener, highly susceptible to demonstrations of guilt, is the consumer. That's why he made it a narrative with himself witnessing things, to elicit emotions and empathy.
If he'd said "people were poisoned by hexane, making the gadgets in your pocket," it still would have accomplished muckraking and had the virtue of being true, but instead, he said "I saw a dozen 13 year olds poisoned by hexane at Foxconn making iPhones," not because he saw that, but because doing a one-man show with "Steve Jobs" in the title sells more tickets than a one-man show about Chinese labor abuses as such.
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Wasn't the problem here not that what Daisey reported was false, but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with? Of course from a journalistic standpoint that is awful but it is now sweeping these problems under the rug.
Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source.
It's hard to argue that second hand information is anywhere near as good as firsthand information; this is something that most people learn in kindergarten. But your point is essentially valid; all of the things Daisey said are now "lies" instead of vague, possibly true claims. It will be a LOT harder to prove any of it is true (even though speculation has been circulating for a LONG time.) I somehow doubt Daisey really cares, though. He is as famous as he could want to be, and probably sleeps peacefull
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Not to defend Daisey, but monologists who get their stories covered by public radio shows do not sleep on big piles of money. Not even small piles.
Too lumpy.
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He's a one-man act that (at least up to this point) sold out very large auditoriums (think: small, successful rock band without any of the overhead and only one person gets ALL the money). I don't imagine he took all the proceeds from that and gave it to some charity, do you? Selling books makes for a decent career, too, and nothing moves books like controversy (right or wrong).
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While Daisey certainly needs to answer for misrepresenting himself (to This American Life), most of the damage that I've seen has been done by a poorly educated and reactionary audience that doesn't understand that it's unreasonable to hold a creative activist to the same journalistic standards that, quite frankly, we don't hold journalists to either. Like so many of the controversies on "our side" (and I'm assuming we have some sort of common cause if you think Foxconn acting with impunity is harmful), we
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Insightful)
"creative activist"?? What the hell is a creative activist? Oh, it's someone who lies because the ends justifies the means.
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A creative activist is an activist who does creative work in the course of their activism. I haven't posted on Slashdot for a while, I forgot what a lot of pedants you all are.
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Informative)
And if his "creative" work involves "creating" facts that are reported on national news as facts, that's okay?
And if Fox News decided to start calling Anne Coulter a "creative activist" - I mean, she writes books, that's creative! - you'd be okay with them reporting, "Anne Coulter says President Obama isn't even an American - he was born in Kenya, and he's a Muslim!" After all, she's creative, and an activist... TRUTH doesn't matter in the news, as long as it's for a "creative" cause, right?
What you're calling pedantry is really just people calling you out for the ridiculous logical contortions you're twisting yourself into in order to justify Daisey's lies - presented as fact - "because they're activism for a good cause."
They asked him for the contact info for the translator he used so they could corroborate his stories. He refused to provide that info. If you don't want your stories fact-checked, don't present them to the world as fact.
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And if his "creative" work involves "creating" facts that are reported on national news as facts, that's okay?
As I said in another response, it depends on the nature of the fabrication. For Mike Daisey to do some research and discover that workers are suffering n-hexane poisoning, then to claim that he met such a worker when he did not, is a lie about his activities but not about a salient fact. It's well within the range of behaviors we rightly expect in a dramatization.
And if Fox News decided to start calling Anne Coulter a "creative activist" - I mean, she writes books, that's creative! - you'd be okay with them reporting, "Anne Coulter says President Obama isn't even an American - he was born in Kenya, and he's a Muslim!" After all, she's creative, and an activist... TRUTH doesn't matter in the news, as long as it's for a "creative" cause, right?
To be honest, yes I would be okay with them reporting that quote—even if they don't call her a "creative activist". The quote doesn't make a
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Probably not, I don't have any complaint against him telling stories from across the industrial base of China to highlight awful working conditions there. As consumers, I'd hope we all care to SOME degree whether or not our cheap toys and comforts are created by people laboring in sweatshop conditions. However (always a 'but,' right?), if he wants people to respond emotionally, using the (real) name of a (real) company that people are familiar with is a dicey proposition.
He
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It's too easy to say that one guy with a stage performance did so much harm
I disagree. This guy has been used as a primary factual source before by people on Slashdot. Now that we find he's been making shit up, are those people going to rethink their beliefs or continue to believe in lies because that's more convenient to their worldview? To the contrary, I don't think it's "too easy" to point out the damage a liar can do to a cause. in fact, I think it's rather hard to do because it's our nature to hold on to beliefs.
Avid TAL Fan Here (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't the problem here not that what Daisey reported was false, but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with? Of course from a journalistic standpoint that is awful but it is now sweeping these problems under the rug.
Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source.
So, being an avid TAL fan, here are some things I remember from the two episodes that he lied about (remember Cathy Lee was his translator):
The things that really worry me are he calls this "unpacking the complexities of how the stories get told" or "untying the story" in the second episode. This guy reminds me of the religious leaders from my youth who will tell you complex lies about their own personal experiences and they justify it by the fact that you are duped into believing past a mark that the evidence justifies. It's gross and disgusting that he washes his hands of it and calls his thing a performance while never straightening out TAL on the specifics.
Like you said, some of the things happened but at what scale? Daisey makes it sound like you could fly there and pick a factory and you'd find it all. Good for TAL for devoting a full hour to what they had misrepresented. I'm still a huge TAL fan.
And every time you think twitter and blogging and Slashdot have replaced modern journalism, behold the above danger.
Re:Avid TAL Fan Here (Score:5, Informative)
And every time you think twitter and blogging and Slashdot have replaced modern journalism, behold the above danger.
This, a thousand times.
Not just this story but it was thanks to real capital J Journalism that we got the facts behind KONY 2012 and Invisible Children. I think that Charlie Brooker's take on it is particularly great.
Evil will always win because Good is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-corporate "journalists" like Daisey and Michael Moore do irreparable damage to the causes they supposedly support by playing loose with the facts. If I were conspiracy minded, I might assume they were working for the very corporations they rail against.
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So...Fake, but accurate?
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Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source.
I'm just now listening to TAL's retraction show and I think that Mike Daisey, being more than just a pompous self-serving douche, has now just achieved the exact opposite of what he was purporting to do.
With all the press that Daisey and his show have gotten before he was exposed, all the public will think now, by glimpsing the current headlines, is that everything he said is a lie and they can effectively dismiss any real problems as exaggerations.
This is just sad for everyone trying to improve real proble
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I'm just now listening to TAL's retraction show and
Listening to Ira's interview recording with Daisey on the air yesterday, I was struck by how much Daisey sounded like a narcissistic emo weasle. Trying desparately to avoid direct answers to some of the most important questions, admitting fault on basic issues of fact where he was caught red-handed, but then spinning like crazy to avoid being seen as unethical. All drama, and no real contrition. Essentially, he made a long, pregnant-pause, faux-apologetic display of being sorry he got caught, but not sorry
Re:I hope he realizes he did more harm than good (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't the problem here not that what Daisey reported was false, but just that he didn't directly speak to people he claimed to speak with? Of course from a journalistic standpoint that is awful but it is now sweeping these problems under the rug.
No, that was not the problem. As an example, Apple's "Supplier Responsibility" report says that Apple found a few dozen cases in total where people were employed before they were sixteen, but this was because of errors and improper age checking. So if Apple said the truth then it would be very, very unlikely that a journalist at the entrance of a Foxconn factory would spot anyone who is not sixteen yet. It would be impossible to find anyone who is 12, 13, or 14. But that is exactly what he claimed, which would make Apple liars.
Next, some people were injured through chemicals. You would think that if things are done right, workers who get injured go to hospital, get treated until they are fine, and come back fine and go back to work. And that's what Apple's report says. Daisey said he met many workers who were so ill that they couldn't even lift a glass. That is a completely different matter. If workers either didn't get treatment, or are so bad even after treatment, then the situation is hundred times worse than Apple claimed.
So there are two lies already that made Apple and Foxconn look an awful lot worse than they should.
Louis Woo is their spokesman? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess that the real story that Mike Daisey didn't uncover is that Foxconn is a Puppeteer front company.
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Phew, I wasn't the only one.
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Phew, I wasn't the only one.
Indeed, but let's not forget that the surname of the famous Ringworld protagonist was spelled "Wu", not "Woo".
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"Woo" is not proper pin yin (chinese romanization), so it would be spelled "Wu" in other circumstances. Clearly a Puppeteer agent. ;)
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> was spelled "Wu", not "Woo".
Spelling is often lost in translation.
Until my great grandfather got to Ellis, our family name was "Smith"
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well played AC, well played.
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Does that mean that Foxconn is also using Chinese slave labor to manufacture General Products Hulls? If so, now we know how the Chinese are going to the moon.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was his "act" presented as "fact"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is why his "act" was presented as "fact" by the Times.
Their excuse is that it was an "op-ed". Opinion pieces are normally clearly identified as such; this piece was not.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to assume that all the issues raised were bullshit because of the lies that were told, which means that if there was any truth at all, it's just been conveniently swept under the rug.
Bozo boy has done FAR more harm to the idea of protecting foreign workers than he could ever have imagined through this literal bullshit.
Clarification (Score:3)
I misread a bit of the article. "This American Life" is not owned by the New York Times as I thought; the Times had to retract a different article by the same fellow.
But that still doesn't change the fundamental problem: Why was a "comedian's" opinion presented as fact?
This is ONE case where I think Apple SHOULD sue.
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Actually this was a point by Ira Glass. That in presenting the story as fact, they gave the story the backing of TAL which does very hard work trying to verify the facts in the case.
TAL's reputation is now tarnished, however, not for long I suspect.
Re:Why was his "act" presented as "fact"? (Score:4)
What I don't understand is why his "act" was presented as "fact" by the Times.
Because he was going around from media outlet to media outlet portraying it as fact. When you say to a reporter "I went to these places, spoke to these people, and saw these things", it's going to be taken as fact. And his "act" did include a lot of factual statements and observations, he just made some up. But at no time did he come out say: "this is based on true events". He protrayed as an actual, factual record of what happened.
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The Times and the other outlets presented this fact because it fit their preconceived ideas.
The real tragedy is (Score:5, Insightful)
He did a huge disservice to exposing truth, good or bad, about Foxconn. If Foxconn isn't all that bad to work for, it would have been great to know - if it is a hell hole, it would have been great to know. But, this just clouds the water in getting to the bottom of it.
Shame, because it would be great to have an unbiased report.
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Re:The real tragedy is (Score:4, Insightful)
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I am so glad Foxconn is so nice (Score:4, Insightful)
I am so glad we now know Foxconn is so nice. Those employees who live in Foxconns worker camps and jump off buildings are probably just depressed that one day they would have to retire.
Seriously- the show was a fraud- but that doesn't mean Foxconn is good. I really don't know- but evidence probably points towards it not being an ideal utopia. The reason Foxconn isn't pursuing legal action is probably because they know it would end up exposing a bunch of bad stuff that really does happen resulting in more bad PR.
Re:I am so glad Foxconn is so nice (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I am so glad Foxconn is so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have a link to the statistics of suicide rate of employed individuals in China? Same could be said of any country/company- suicide rates tend to be hiring amongst the unemployed and the convicted.
Re:I am so glad Foxconn is so nice (Score:4, Informative)
Admittedly this data is a bit old, but it does come from WHO (and not just some blog):
http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/chin.pdf/ [who.int]
Suicide rate among people aged 25-34 is 15.1 per 100,000.
Re:I am so glad Foxconn is so nice (Score:4, Informative)
Another link, more recent data, sourced from China state media:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i1FL2q8ZO_Z93-mOqOx5eSYQW36Q?docId=CNG.fe11c1b55d60e484a37a458dccdd1b34.8f1/ [google.com]
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Those employees who live in Foxconns worker camps and jump off buildings are probably just depressed that one day they would have to retire.
Ah yes, the older lie. Foxconn employs almost a million people. When you have that many people in a group, some of them will commit suicide. We measure the extent to which that happens by "the suicide rate". The fact is that the suicide rate at those factories is significantly lower than the general suicide rate of Chinese people.
i.e. Foxconn employees are LESS likely to comit suicide than your average chinese person.
There's a strong desire amongst many in America to believe anything bad about china, and a
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I think the Post Office has the same PR issue. At one point, there were over a million employees, but the term "going postal" -- well, that stuck.
Statistics don't really impact people at a basic level.
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Yes because you have to accept a certain amount of your workforce committing suicide....*eye roll* You have people committing suicide - that tells you something is wrong.
And there's one more person that doesn't understand statistics... or mental health issues...
You have people living in crammed "dorms" and working 12 hour shifts. Are so such a heartless bastard to ignore this conditions. Apple is only saving 20% but still getting 70% to 80% markup.
...and believes whatever he wants to believe, regardless of what the truth is.
Foxconn doesn't have slaves, they can leave their job just as anyone in the west could. They have people queueing up outside the factory gates wanting jobs, because by Chinese standards they are good jobs.
China doesn't yet have general standards of living as good as western countries do. In 20-30 years they will have. It doesn't happen ove
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When you learn that SOME of the information you built your assumptions on are wrong -- it's a good idea to CHECK the rest.
Those suicides at FoxConn amount to about 3 in 100,000. Since FoxConn has around 900,000 employees -- it seems like a lot, but it's less than the average in the US or China.
Being a worker in China sucks -- we can all admit that. It seems to me, however, that the "dorms" mean free room and board. So would NOT getting housing and a meal with the same pay be a bonus? We have to look at rela
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Daisey's Response (Score:3, Informative)
Mike Daisey comments on "This American Life" controversy. [blogspot.com]
In other news, Political Cartoons should not also be taken as literal fact.
Especially if they have talking ducks in them.
Re:Daisey's Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is an amazingly disingenuous response. Mike Daisy presents his monologues as first hand experiences . That is a flat out lie. Are his other monologues similarly not encumbered by the truth?
And he was told, repeatedly, that This American Life considers actual facts to be important.
And it also matters a lot. IF a random American in a hawaiian shirt would find out all this it would be a much more serious problem than the reality, which is bad but no where near as atrocious as he presents it.
Re:Daisey's Response (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously ? This is "informative".
No. This is ass-covering. This is "oh shit, someone actually looked at my data, that I tried to hide by claiming my source was now incommunicado. WTF do I say now ?"
He presented stuff as fact. At no point did he say "This is mainly fiction", or "Some of this shit I just made up for dramatic effect", or *anything* in fact that would give the game away.
Even *if* we give him a pass on the monologues, there's no excuse for lying when asked direct questions by interviewers (multiple times, and not just TAL). Things like "did you meet the man with the hexane-poisened hand who was denied medical care and fired, that you claim to have met", answer: "yes"; reality: no.
He's a proven liar. He's been outed. Nothing he says has any credibility any more. Nothing. Which is a shame when it comes to raising the standards of living in China.
Simon.
Re:Daisey's Response (Score:5, Interesting)
In what way is he a proven liar?
It's just as likely that Foxonn / the Chinese government rounded up a few workers, got their stories straight, and then tipped off TAL to Daisey's "lies".
The follow up fact checking could simply have been fed a different story.
Why believe story B over story A? From your perspective, there is exactly as much evidence for one as there is for the other. Bottom line is that unless youw ork on Foxconn you don't know what goes on there. It boggles my mind that so many people are so eager to default to the "Foxconn is okay and better than most." conclusion with 0 evidence, yet they're so quick to skewer a Western company if they don't hand out raises to the unions who encourage workers to sabotage the line so they can work overtime.
Read/listen to the retraction.
Daisy's personal story was incredibly full of holes, and he admitted it on tape. EG, just to start with, the guards at Foxcon don't have guns. An illegal underground union for $20/day workers wouldn't meet at Starbucks. He lied to TAL about his translator. N-Hexane was a problem at other suppliers a thousand miles away, not Foxcon. Basically, Daisy's story was so full of holes once a US reporter, based in China, started looking at things it all fell apart.
The result is basically anything that Daisy said he has personally experienced in a monologue can't be trusted: it may be based on "truthyness", actual events that he heard or read about in a newspaper, but in no way should one believe that they actually happened to him.
Hard to replace. (Score:3)
The interesting is that Foxconn actually offers a better work environment than many companies in China, and especially those by Chinese. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, in case you're confused. The companies producing stuff domestically offer some of the most deplorable working environments which is why Chinese tend to flock to foreign companies. And the interesting thing is that it's been shown that many Chinese cities have a higher suicide rate than Foxconn's sprawling campus, a city in it's own right.
And the fact is that Apple is extremely unlikely to end their relationship with Foxconn. There aren't many companies out there that can manufacture electronics with such consistent quality, and be able to meet demand time and time again and likely at a decent cost. This is not a trivial skill set and certainly not something easily replaced.
This is not to say that things are ideal. But then no one wants electronics to cost double what they do now.
I saw Mike Daisey... (Score:3)
No, wait. I didn't. That was theater.
Timing (Score:3)
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This weekend saw a killer deal for a cheap HTPC barebones kit. The only reason I didn't buy it was because it was Foxconn made. I can't be sure about other electronics- who knows if they were built in similar bad conditions- but when a box is branded Foxconn I know it is safe to avoid.
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I guess that accounts for all the cheap labor.
to this:
I wouldn't believe anything Mr. Woo has to say.
If you have other reasons why you don't trust what Mr. Woo said, maybe it'd be worthwhile to air those as well.
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Exactly how are "Apple spinning the entire report as false" ?
I've not read *anything* about this from Apple. I've read a whole spectrum of pieces from idiotic through incisive reporting from both sides, I've read real journalists eviscerate Daisey once the truth came out, and I've read his "account" of things he "saw". Apple have remained quite impressively restrained on the matter, as far as I can tell. I'm not sure I could be as restrained if some douchebag was lying about me in a public forum.
Simon