If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend listening to This American Life‘s episode about Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The full audio has been posted here.

A lot of people have talked about it, but it’s definitely worth listening to TAL’s dissection. It’s riveting to hear the dead air as Daisey is directly confronted with the outright falsehoods in his story.

Also read Grist editor Scott Rosenberg’s fantastic take on this. Extremely good. “…there’s no such thing as a neutral story. But there is such a thing as an honest story.”

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8 replies on “Mike Daisey and the <i>This American Life</i> Retraction”

  1. Not surprisingly, it is clear (especially from comments from last week’s post) that not too many Apple Fanbois made it to “Act III” of the program.

    What Daisey lied about was generally the quantity of little hands/people meeting/hexane poisoned people he met with, not that he met with them at all. That said, I’m inclined to agree with Ira that his inability to tell the truth about little things casts doubt on everything else.

    Would you like your (19 year-old) sister work 65+ hour shifts and staying in a cramped rat-infested dorm to make a product for you? Do you think such conditions are “just”? If not, then why is it ok to ship that shitty work to China?

  3. Of the original production, it always struck me that Daisey was more interested in his voice than the message. I don’t buy his sorrow/regret act now, either.

    Addressing the final 3rd of today’s redaction piece: I personally don’t feel it’s my business to export my values to China. It’s a different culture and they have the responsibility to themselves to demand better working conditions.

    So no. I don’t feel particularly guilty while using an Apple device. I’m far sadder about all the other injustices in the world.

  4. I also should add: it should be everyone’s individual responsibility to know and understand how something they’re using is made. Folks need to be educated and make decisions based on fact.

  6. It’s unfortunate, but this will be used to discredit his entire message, which is not a bad one. By and large he embellished the truth, and the things he spoke about should still be a grave concern to consumers. Alas, cognitive dissonance for many Apple fans will kick in, now fully excused by this debacle, and people will go back to guilt-free purchasing — perhaps even more stubborn in their refusal to acknowledge the problem.

    A real shame, because I think this story had legs and was beginning to bring about some positive changes for these workers.

  8. @ 10, probably just a coincidence, but I bet Apple’s dividend announcement timing wasn’t purely a coincidence. That’s quite a PR one-two punch for Apple.

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