This American Retraction

Logo from the radio program This American Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Back in January, the public radio program "This American Life" took its listeners through one man's journey to a factory in China that makes products for Apple.  He told of all sorts of horrors, including the use of underage workers, security guards with guns and workers poisoned by chemicals.

Usually, "This American Life" prides itself on its journalistic standards on the stories they cover, and the prestigious awards they've won since the program debuted in 1995 bear that out.  This time, however, they really should have reconsidered its source.

Mike Daisey, the person in the first paragraph who described those alleged violations at the Chinese plant, is a Chicago-based writer and actor.  Not a journalist.  He made up parts of his story as part of a one-man show titled "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs".  Hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

As unusual as it is for any media organization (other than print) to admit they got a story wrong, it is even more unusual for one of them to devote an entire program to it.  And that's what TAL did, in a broadcast that aired over the weekend.  (Hear it at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/.)

In one segment following host Ira Glass' on-air apology, there was a report done by Rob Schmitz, a correspondent for public radio's "Marketplace" who blew the whistle on Daisey to begin with.  Schmitz interviewed a Chinese interpreter named Cathy, who refuted the claims Daisey made in that visit to the plant.

Another segment featured Glass grilling Daisey about the deception.  Through stammers and long pauses (which sounded like dead air to listeners), Daisey got around to regretting that he ever worked with TAL on this story in the first place.

"This American Life", produced by WBEZ in Chicago and distributed by Public Radio International, may have tripped up by not vetting all its sources for this story.  But the program also airs first-person essays from various authors and actors such as Daisey, in addition to the investigative pieces.  Are they vetted the same way?  And is what they say the truth, or is it just infotainment?

If nothing else, now you know where your iPhones and iPads are made.  Given how much work American companies export overseas at the expense of American workers for the convenience of the American consumer, that is a story in itself.  And it should be told by someone who isn't a monologist.