In January 2011, Mike Daisey began performing his off-Broadway monologue, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”. The show claimed to expose the working conditions in the Chinese factories that produce over half of the world’s electronic devices. We know know that Daisey’s monologue was a “theatrical piece” not a factual report.
Daisey lied to Ira Glass, who retracted on Friday a long excerpt of Daisey’s show that ran on This American Life in January. He lied to me last year when he stood by his reporting and told me — to my face — that he saw Foxconn guards carrying guns and met workers at the gates of the iPhone assembly plant as young, even, as 11 years old.
Glass confronted Daisey in an hour-long This American Life episode that aired on Saturday. It’s compelling radio. There’s a transcript here.
Executives at Apple knew Daisey was pushing fiction as fact, but to all appearances, they never attempted to rebut Daisey’s claims. Theories are that Apple didn’t want to give him a broader stage by engaging in a public debate. Why elevate his comments in the public eye? Sometimes just responding to a critic acts to confirm his criticisms in the eyes of the public.
Elmer De-Witt: “It turns out the Apple public relations staffers did talk to reporters — always off the record — about Mike Daisey, pointing out inaccuracies in his account and suggesting that it was extremely unlikely that one man could have seen as much as Daisey claimed he saw in one trip to China. Among the journalists they warned off the Daisey story were Ira Glass and This American Life producer Brian Reid.”