Mike Daisey responds

http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/reports-of-my-death-have-been-greatly.html

by ryandvm • 14 years ago

33 48 14 years ago

mikedaisey.blogspot.com.au

News flash bud, when you lie to your audience you lose all credibility. This isn't new. "I didn't lie MUCH! There is some truth in there!" is great but your brand has been tarnished in a major way. The fact that you're sitting there acting like Ira Glass is the asshole for drawing attention to the fact you put his reputation on the line -- NPR's reputation -- that you lied to millions of people, tells me you live in a fantasy world.

Hope this dude goes down in flames forever. No character trait I hate more in the world than people who have convinced themselves that it's ok to lie.

skilesare7• 14 years ago

Your first stament is wrong. Theater requires you lie to your audience. For example, there are two movies coming out about Abraham Lincoln this year:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443272/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1611224/

Clearly one of these is an outright fabrication of the events of Lincoln's life.

In the other Steven Spielberg is going to produce a film that is 100% fabricated and yet people are going to gush about the truth of Abe Lincoln that it captures. The sets will be fake. Most of the dialogue will be made up and dramaticized. No one will question this. No one will care.

Mike's issue was that he wanted to do more and he shouldn't have. He should have stayed off of NPR, out of print, and off the talk shows.

I still think that his show is closer to "Lincoln: The sixteenth President of the United States guides the North to victory during the Civil War" than "Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them."

Terretta• 14 years ago

My monologue was a fabrication, but they edited me!

wmeredith• 14 years ago

This is well stated, but it's the same old "the end justifies the means" reasoning that's long been a comfort to many liars, cheats and thieves.

Yes, Chinese labor sucks compared to a fat American lifestyle, but hyperbole and outright fabrication has now trivialized that issue. A good reporter does not insert themselves into the story if they're serious about the subject matter.

goatforce5• 14 years ago

"There is nothing in this controversy that contests the facts in my work about the nature of Chinese manufacturing."

Nice bit of misdirection there.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> He’s a storyteller within the context of radio journalism, and I am a storyteller in the theater.

This comment is pretty offensive. Journalists do tell stories, but they make sure those stories are true, verified, factual.

> Given the tenor of the condemnation, you would think I had concocted an elaborate, fanciful universe filled with furnaces in which babies are burned to make iPhone components, or that I never went to China, never stood outside the gates of Foxconn, never pretended to be a businessman to get inside of factories, never spoke to any workers.

But now people will assume that the facts about abusive conditions at developing nation factories (not just China) are created by people like Daisey; that they're on a par with 'babies burning to make iPhones'.

Using babies to make his point is particularly unfortunate because there are suspicions that some factories force women to have abortions. Obviously abortion is so political and polarised it's impossible to find any credible data. Most people agree that forced abortions (whether from the state but especially from employers) are not acceptable. Here's one newspaper article, which doesn't mention factories.

(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/women-forced-...)

In general, life for poor people in China sucks. That doesn't mean we should accept abuse in factories to produce luxury goods for rich people.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

"Journalists do tell stories, but they make sure those stories are true, verified, factual."

Some of them do. Sadly, it's somewhat of a dying art. The retraction episode of This American Life might be the apex of such activity in traditional journalism for all we know. Most other news outlets fall far short of that standard.

knowtheory• 14 years ago

So, I'm a software developer that joined an investigative journalism non-profit 6 months ago.

There is awesome investigative journalism going on. We even hold two conferences a year about it, one focused on investigative stuff specifically (http://ire.org/conferences/ire-2012/ ), and one focusing on news technology (http://ire.org/conferences/nicar-2012/ ).

I certainly can't claim that investigative reporting (or any reporting really) is doing as well as it has in the past, given the massive attrition in the news industry, but there are a lot of reporters out there who are fighting the good fight.

We even put out a newsletter of investigative stories: http://ire.org/blog/extra-extra/

Edit: don't forget ProPublica's awesome #muckreads blog (http://projects.propublica.org/muckreads/ ).

jamesli• 14 years ago

> Journalists do tell stories, but they make sure those stories are true, verified, factual.

Exactly.

I heard many horrible stories about Foxconn from my friends. They should be exposed and punished. But fabrication is definitely wrong. It is especially so for a journalist reporter.

For example, it is simply not true that factoreis could <b>force</b> abortions. Only the government has the authority to force abortion due to the one-child policy. Foxconn is a private factory. Pregnant women would for sure get discriminated against in Foxconn. They decide to either quit, or choose abortion to keep the job. Discrimination against pregnant women is definitely wrong. But such discrimination and forced abortion are completely two matters.

As a side note, discrimination against pregnant women is a wide-spread matter in private companies in China. A good friend of mine worked in the China headquarter of one of the "big four". Her boss gave her such a hard time when my friend got pregnant and could not work 12 hours a day. My friend simply quit. She is a happy mom now.

simonh• 14 years ago

<satire> It wasn't the truth, but hey at least it was truthy.

That's enough nowadays, isn't it?</satire>

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

"I apologized in this week’s episode to anyone who felt betrayed. I stand by that apology. But understand that if you felt something that connected you with where your devices come from—that is not a lie. That is art."

I have problems with someone re-iterating the sincerity of their apology followed by "but". Standing by an apology means not machine-gunning it with caveats seconds later.

"I told Ira that story should always be subordinate to the truth, and I still believe that. Sometimes I fall short of that goal, but I will never stop trying to achieve it."

The indignation in this statement is toxic. Dishonesty - fabricating facts and then dissembling to cover it up - is not an oopsie that we try and avoid. Trust is a cornerstone of civilization and more so for anyone in a journalist-activist function. Having a position doesn't entitle you to make up facts. Having an audience that should fact-check aggressively doesn't mean you get to actively challenge this faculty.

You assumed we, the audience, were too dumb to get the meaning from the actual facts and so juiced it up in accordance with how much brighter than us you know yourself to be. Now you're playing the victim.

You asked people to open their eyes and think critically. Sorry we didn't stay on the hamster wheel as we were supposed to.

kenrikm• 14 years ago

After lieing the way he did he finishes by talking about honesty? Seriously? I wonder how much he made off of this whole debacle, I doubt that he did it for free out of the kindness of his heart and to bring these "terrible things to light". I have the same issue with Michael Moore and "Sicko" what he showed about the Cuban healthcare system was a lie/fabrication I know because my wife lived there until 2005 when she was granted her American residency. Always look for the agenda before you believe something like this, trust but verify.

jd• 14 years ago

This is a really well written response by Mike, but frankly I'm not convinced. Not in the least. And to accuse Ira Glass of unfair editing (with the dead silences and all) really takes the cake. I think Ira gave Mike every opportunity to come clean, and he didn't. Only when directly confronted with facts contrary to the story did he shift his position, and then only so slightly as to keep his main story intact.

As far as I can tell Mike is only sorry he got caught.

regnum• 14 years ago

"Felt betrayed" should be changed to "was betrayed", then it would be a true apology. Otherwise, it is just a sort of blaming the victim.

rgrieselhuber• 14 years ago

Jesus. How did this guy ever get a job as a radio journalist?

skilesare7• 14 years ago

Is this a joke? Mike Daisey is not a radio journalist. He isn't a journalist. He does theater. NPR picked up part of one of his show.

iamwil• 14 years ago

I think he claims to be a performer that "weaves autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories"

It's convenient, I suppose. When his journalism falls short, he calls himself a performer. When his stories are incredulous, he calls himself a journalist.

Joeri• 14 years ago

I assumed everyone understood that the monologue was part fabrication. It fit together so well that it couldn't have happened as it was told. Frankly i'm surprised at the outrage. I thought it was masterful storytelling that pointed out a genuine problem. I don't care if it's not 100% factual.

Steko• 14 years ago

"not 100% factual" ia an interesting way to spin "completely fabricated and slanderous"

dbecker• 14 years ago

The story wasn't just "not 100% factual," it was substantively misleading.

For example: A huge part of the story was about 12 and 13 year old kids that Daisy met at the factory gates. He says he saw lots of them, and he suggests that this is the norm. Other reports suggest this is very rare.

The story isn't true using the conventional definition of true... and it isn't true even using Daisy's theatrical definition of true.

billybob• 14 years ago

One of the unfortunate aspects of this episode is that, as Daisey says, the problems he discusses are mostly real. He didn't have to lie.

For example, he could have talked about the N-Hexane poisoning without lying. He could have cited news reports, or traveled to interview people, or done it over the phone, or even gotten the info from secondhand interviews. He could have said "imagine a man who..." and proceeded to paint a painful picture based on the facts that were already public.

But he didn't. He chose to pretend he had met these people. He would say that made the story more emotionally impactful, and maybe that's true. But it also poisoned it. It was a very condescending move to pull on his audiences; there is neither artistic nor factual integrity in it.

If he had stuck to the facts, he would still have had a great performance. Too bad.

georgieporgie2• 14 years ago

I felt the same. Having listened to yesterday's This American Life retracting the prior show, it seemed that he completely fabricated the story of the 12 and 13 year-olds. Even according to his story, which doesn't make sense, he met an English-speaking 13 year old and simply assumed that her friend was 12.

Everything else appeared to be merely stretching the truth, retelling factual events as if they were witnessed first hand, and other things for which I'd be willing to grant some artistic license, provided it were told with a disclaimer.

tablescraps3• 14 years ago

He said he met a 13 y/o but the translator said he didn't.

I can't believe that he met a 13 y/o factory worker who spoken English.

I wish people would stop excusing his bullshit. This goes way beyond 'stretching'.

oyving• 14 years ago

But you don't help fixing problems by telling a lie about them, you just make it more difficult for those trying to tell the truth about the issue. It does not seem Daisey understands that he has hurt the cause he claims he was trying to help.

cafard• 14 years ago

"... and finishing the episode with audio pulled out of context from my performance was masterful."

As apologies go, a raised middle finger on the way out the door would convey the same sentiment less disingenously.

jonstjohn• 14 years ago

What I found interesting in the This American Life episode over the weekend is that Mike Daisey claimed that the reason why he didn't retract his story before is that he was afraid that it would undo all the 'good it had done' in spreading 'the truth'. At the same time, he suggested that it was he felt it was his best work yet. I suspect that he really feared the disintegration of 'his best work' when the lies were uncovered, and his supposed fear of un-doing the 'good' his story has done was really just another layer of justification. There are certain personality types that will justify anything questionable that they do - and those justifications are often complex with many layers.

rumblestrut• 14 years ago

I saw this tweet yesterday after listening to the TAL program. He says his work should be treated differently because it's theater, and yet the program notes seen here state:

"THIS IS A WORK OF NONFICTION."

https://twitter.com/#!/afgld/status/181439210643931136/photo...

Daisey doesn't understand that, "I'm sorry. I lied. Please forgive me," would have went a lot further than what he's doing now.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

The popularization of PR-speak in North America is unfortunate.

olalonde• 14 years ago

I haven't really followed this whole story, but I live a few blocks away from Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen and I know a few people who work there. I'd be willing to do some light investigative work in my free time for the HN community if there's interest.

trustfundbaby• 14 years ago

tldr: I lied, but what I lied about is actually true, so there ... btw I'm kinda sorry I lied.

what a guy.

skilesare7• 14 years ago

Was Jean Valjean really at the barricade?

I've been following Mike Daisey for a few years. He's really good at what he does and he's really open with his fan base. You can find a number of his monologues here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mike-daisey/id2085588?mt=1... (I particularly liked the Nicola Tesla Monologue)

Notice that he has one called 'All Stories Are Fiction'.

I think Mike got caught up in a multi-media world when he's a one media kind of guy. That media is theater. It is a world where people pay lots of money to watch other people try as hard as they can to convince the viewers that they are in the streets of Paris and there is a might battle being waged. In the end the audience feels something. And that is the goal.

The problem is that Mike let this 'feel something' get ahead of the burden that the programs he was appearing on are under.

If Mike Daisey comes to your town and you don't go because of this, you're being petty and missing a great show.

That being so, he should get away from journalism because people that produce that content have no room for theater.*

*of course there is fox news.

eropple3• 14 years ago

> If Mike Daisey comes to your town and you don't go because of this, you're being petty

"If you don't give money to someone because of their past of intellectual dishonesty, you're being petty" doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

skilesare7• 14 years ago

That is the whole point. He was not attempting to be intellectually honest. There is no room for intellect in the theater. If you walk into Les Mis and use your intellect, the second you see that turntable in a prison camp you're going to yell, 'thats bulls*' and storm out.

I should have said if you don't go hear someone tell a story because of their past storytelling, you're being petty.

mmuro• 14 years ago

Standing behind the lie is easier than admitting the truth.

Dude got caught. The Dateline piece confirmed your untruths. Man up!

timr2• 14 years ago

"Especially galling is how many are gleefully eager to dance on my grave expressly so they can return to ignoring everything about the circumstances under which their devices are made. Given the tone, you would think I had fabulated an elaborate hoax, filled with astonishing horrors that no one had ever seen before."

I think that's a really important, fair point. Whatever this guy lied about with regard to his personal experiences in China, those things are minor compared to the truth of the situation. I really wish he hadn't done that. He didn't need to lie -- the story is so fundamentally awful that it stands without the minor things he fabricated. But now people are dismissing the whole message.

The dramatic indignation in the other comments in this thread is predictable, unenlightening, and unhelpful -- far more heat than light. The most dangerous thing about this controversy is that people will take knee-jerk reactions to Daisey as an indication that nothing is wrong with the world of electronics. And that's a tragedy, in the most traditional sense of the word.

Gnolfo• 14 years ago

The most dangerous thing about this controversy is that people will take knee-jerk reactions to Daisey as an indication that nothing is wrong with the world of electronics.

What's more dangerous is what this suggests the proper reaction is to be. You're right, it is a tragedy that the message people take away from this might be that things aren't as bad over there as we hear. And it's a tragedy of his own doing because he directly contributed to that message by telling us things that weren't true.

I guess nobody told him the story of the boy who cried wolf when he was little.

bradleyland• 14 years ago

Therein lies the great irony. By partaking in intellectual dishonesty, Mike Daisey has created an unnecessary sideshow that is stealing away the spotlight from the real issue.

I'm bothered, in part, by the fact that Apple is the target in all these attacks. There are some very large questions on the table here, and Apple is but one player. Arguably, they're putting the most effort in to trying to improve. Where's the outrage for Samsung? For HTC? For Dell?

How about western consumers? Even those of us who are aware of the issues, yet somehow find a way to resolve spending $499 on our latest 9.7 inches of retina exploitation? Even further, what happens to the world economy without $300/month labor by the millions?

I guess a narrative needs a villain. I just hope that everyone maintains some sense of perspective. We're not talking about the practices of one corporation here. We're talking about a major component of consumerist culture. That's the conversation, and it's being ignored at every turn.

timr2• 14 years ago

Absolutely agreed. Daisey lied about some relatively minor stuff (in the big picture), so the attack is against Mike Daisey.

The straw man is dead. Long live the straw man.

brudgers• 14 years ago

What is fundamentally flawed with the state of journalism is not what Mike Daisey does. He's an actor who created a one man show.

What is flawed is that journalists continue to mistake his one man show for investigative reporting. The extent to which it is occurring borders on the deliberate.

Rob Schmitz's investigation is the journalistic equivalent to revealing that Julius Caesar could not have said:

  Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
  To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say,
  The barren, touched in this holy chase,
  Shake off their sterile curse.

because he did not speak Elizabethan English.

Schmitz should be able to distinguish between a news report and entertainment. He should be able to provide context for the large themes in Daisey's performance given that they coincide with his own journalistic reports for Marketplace. He could have done actual journalism, instead he conflated theater with journalism and then revealed it as theater while pretending to conduct journalism.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/apple-economy/app....

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/apple-economy/china-c....

Ira Glass from the transcript of the original This American Life piece:

  When I saw Mike Daisey perform this story on stage,
  when I left the theater I had a lot of questions.
  I mean, he's not a reporter, and I wondered,
  did he get it right?

The journalistic failings fall on journalists. Mr. Glass knew Daisey wasn't a reporter all along.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/t....

Mike Daisey responds

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