Mike Daisey is making it very hard for the rest of us to focus on a critical issue – Apple’s treatment of its workers in China.
The “artist” who did a piece for the National Public Radio show “This American Life,” was forced to admit in recent days that he fabricated his accounts of worker mistreatment inside the Foxconn factory in China, where Apple and other technology companies make their products.
In his piece on the award-winning program, produced by Ira Glass, Daisey says: “….. I saw underage workers. I talked to workers 13-14, 15 years old. I talked to workers whose hands had been destroyed.”
Also read: ‘This American Life’ Retracts Report on Working Conditions at Apple Supplier
No, he didn’t! (Sorry, I can’t help but use exclamation points because I can hardly believe it.)
Rob Schmitz, a reporter for Marketplace based in China, tracked down Daisey’s translator, and found out that they’d met none of those people. Turns out that Daisey met people who met 
people who had heard of things like that happening.
Note to Daisey: journalism must be relentlessly fact-based. It’s not art. And it isn’t easy either. We provide critical information on which public debate can be based, and lazy shortcuts like this under the guise of ‘making art’ undermine the trust between reader (or in radio, listener) and journalist.
Also read: Steve Jobs: Bully. Cry-Baby.
I have to say that this lapse makes me furious, and yes I accept Glass’s apology, but I sure hope this sparks some deep discussions at that show, one of my very favorites on the radio, about news process.
“We’re horrified to have let something like this onto public radio,” Glass wrote in a blog post. “Many dedicated reporters and editors – our friends and colleagues – have worked for years to build the reputation for accuracy and integrity that the journalism on public radio enjoys.”
The debate over jobs is at stake here. American jobs that have gone overseas. Jobs in China that fuel our must-have consumer gadgets. The responsibility of inordinately rich, global companies like Apple to show leadership and a sense of values that extend through all parts of the company.
Here’s where Apple stands on this debate, because I’ve asked and so have many others, including President Obama last year in a meeting with Steve Jobs:
1. There are no skilled laborers in this country to build Apple products to the required level of excellence.
2. It’s not Apple’s job to solve America’s job crisis.
3. Apple is no better than the best and no worse than the worst of other U.S. manufacturers that use Foxconn in China.
Apparently that’s a closed matter. As The New York Times wrote in January, Apple believes that “’Made in the USA’ is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.” And with Apple asking for an audit of the factory, the company apparently hopes it will all go away.
Also read: ‘Outraged’ Apple CEO Deems N.Y. Times’ Exposé ‘Offensive’
But the debate over how an inordinately cash-rich company like Apple lives its values overseas is a critical one.
And it is badly clouded by the news that the guy who probably inspired The New York Times to do its (fact-based) investigative piece on the issue was feeling in an artistic mode when putting pen to paper.
Here’s the whining excuse by Mike Daisey: “I’m not going to say I didn’t take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard. But the mistake I truly regret is that I had it on your show as journalism. But it isn’t journalism. It’s theater.”
Mike Daisey, please get out of our sandbox. We don’t do ‘theater.’
Marketplace report below: