Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory (This American Life)

[Elessar78]

They discuss in act two about how empllyees are voting with their feet. Turnover is really high and at some point it can't be cheaper to constantly train replacements and in time you're going to run out of replacements who are willing.

The piece also touched on an interesting thing aspect in that China is a nascent economy. The US went through the same thing during this coutry's rise—we grew through environmentally destructive practices and ghastly working conditions.

[Larry]

They discuss in act two about how empllyees are voting with their feet. Turnover is really high and at some point it can't be cheaper to constantly train replacements and in time you're going to run out of replacements who are willing.

The piece also touched on an interesting thing aspect in that China is a nascent economy. The US went through the same thing during this coutry's rise—we grew through environmentally destructive practices and ghastly working conditions.

I wouldn't count on China running out of disposable employees any time soon.

[AsburySkinsFan]

They discuss in act two about how empllyees are voting with their feet. Turnover is really high and at some point it can't be cheaper to constantly train replacements and in time you're going to run out of replacements who are willing.

Yeah, the turnover is something like 20%, that is just crazy, but how hard can it be to train a person to wipe down the glass for an iPhone?

The piece also touched on an interesting thing aspect in that China is a nascent economy. The US went through the same thing during this coutry's rise—we grew through environmentally destructive practices and ghastly working conditions.

The major difference here is that in the US we have the right to form a union, there the gov't steps in and ships you off to a work camp or blacklists you. The only way we grew out of corporate abuse was the ability to go on strike with a union, a right that these people do not have. In many ways the people of China are the ants in the movie "A Bugs Life", the day they realize there are more of them than the grasshoppers it's game over.

[Elessar78]

Nice analogy. But I think even in the American version, the workers had to fight for the right to unionize and sometimes it was bloody.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Nice analogy. But I think even in the American version, the workers had to fight for the right to unionize and sometimes it was bloody.

True enough but even at its bloodiest it wasn't the US gov't rolling over them in tanks.

[alexey]

True enough but even at its bloodiest it wasn't the US gov't rolling over them in tanks.

the good news is that such exploitation requires our tacit approval. We can actually change things if we have the political will for it.

The bad news is that currently in our country political will can be purchased. The circle is complete, and our national dialog does not appear to be moving in the proper direction.

Where are the dems with the balls? Russ Feingold has been making the rounds, he seems to be talking about some of these things. Or maybe Obama will remember the platform that he ran on a few years back. An election between extreme nuts right and moderate "fair share" right will not be fun.

[AsburySkinsFan]

the good news is that such exploitation requires our tacit approval. We can actually change things if we have the political will for it.

Agree and in a market where the consumers as a whole can force companies to change the way companies operate, that's the hopeful part.

The bad news is that currently in our country political will can be purchased. The circle is complete, and our national dialog does not appear to be moving in the proper direction.

Agreed, in this devisive climate I find it difficult to imagine unified populace joining together for any thing especially since the industires which would have to change will simply buy their own experts who will sell the status quo and lies like the one's that say that sweat shops are necessary in developing economies, when the reality is that sweatshops are necessary in developing economies in order to sustain the self indulgent levels of consumerism we see in our society today.

Where are the dems with the balls? Russ Feingold has been making the rounds, he seems to be talking about some of these things. Or maybe Obama will remember the platform that he ran on a few years back. An election between extreme nuts right and moderate "fair share" right will not be fun.

Political will is soley dependent upon finances, when the money flows politicians grow all sorts of courage.

[Dan T.]

*Bump*

Well, it looks like Mr. Daisey made up "facts" for his "This American Life" piece:

This American Life retracts Apple episode, says Daisey fabricated parts

The public radio show This American Life has retracted an entire storyline told by comedian and self-described Apple "fanboy" Mike Daisey that aired in early January after Daisey's translator said he made up significant details of the tale.

In a press release, the show says the episode was the most popular in its history and was downloaded 888,000 times. The episode also sparked a petition for Apple to improve its working conditions that was signed by a quarter of a million people.

Daisey said in the 39-minute episode that he became curious about the conditions of Chinese factories where Apple products are made after he discovered photos of factory workers that were left onto his iPhone by mistake. He travelled to the factories in Shenzhen, China and interviewed workers there, who told him they endured terrible working conditions. Daisey described meeting workers whose hands were shaking after they were poisoned with the neurotoxin hexane and meeting several children right at the gates of the factory who were as young as 12 years old.

The China correspondent for the radio show Marketplace, Rob Schmitz, wrote that he decided to track down Daisey's translator after he found it suspicious for Daisey to ferret out some of the worst labor abuses reporters have been hunting for years in a six-day trip to the site. Translator Cathy Lee told Schmitz that she never saw the underaged or poisoned workers, and that she also never saw armed factory guards, which Daisey describes.

So why didn't This American Life talk to Cathy Lee earlier, before they aired the episode? In a press release, the show says Daisey told them he lost her cell phone number. "At that point, we should've killed the story," show host Ira Glass said in the release. "But other things Daisey told us about Apple's operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn't think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake."

This American Life claimed it did "weeks of fact checking to corroborate Daisey's findings," when airing his original episode.
A new episode explaining how the show was duped will air Friday at 8 p.m. According to Schmitz, Daisey admits on the show that he never talked to poisoned workers.

More here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...175638428.html

While he still stands by parts of his story, this quote from Daisey sums it up:
"My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."

[Larry]

He's an entertainer.

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That said, I have to confess that I'm not certain that I'd take the word of a translator who I assume works for the Chinese government's "what do we want foreigners to see" department, either.

[Mad Mike]

Let's all give a hand to Michael Moore, who made bull****, fabricated documentaries like this popular. Here's to all those who think it's OK to lie to push their agenda.

---------- Post added March-16th-2012 at 07:41 PM ----------

He's an entertainer.

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That said, I have to confess that I'm not certain that I'd take the word of a translator who I assume works for the Chinese government's "what do we want foreigners to see" department, either.

It's more than just his word against the translator. And even if it wasn't, what does the fact that Daisey tried to prevent any contact with her tell you? Or the simple fact that he ADMITTED that he lied.

Something tells me you WANT to believe the lies.

[Larry]

Let's all give a hand to Michael Moore, who made bull****, fabricated documentaries like this popular. Here's to all those who think it's OK to lie to push their agenda.

---------- Post added March-16th-2012 at 07:41 PM ----------



It's more than just his word against the translator. And even if it wasn't, what does the fact that Daisey tried to prevent any contact with her tell you?

Oh, I think the fact that he seems to have admitted that he made things up to be pretty conclusive.

[Mad Mike]

Oh, I think the fact that he seems to have admitted that he made things up to be pretty conclusive.

Then why the comment about not trusting the translator?

[AsburySkinsFan]

Ugh...what a shame.
Even if he fabricated minor portions of his story everything will now be cast in doubt.

What a way to give the upper hand back to the corporations in their abuse of their employees.

[AsburySkinsFan]

A not so flattering piece on the fiasco. Not surprisingly Mike has been totally silent on facebook for a week or more now. Before I left for Guatemala his activity was fading, and then just disappeared I was wondering why until I heard about this. It really is a shame that he fabricated some of these accounts when so much of the things that he made up aren't the real gut of the matter, but since part was made up it will cast doubt on all of it....just a shame that he didn't think about the long term consequences.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...st-of-him.html

Mike Daisey, a rising star in the theater world, was brought to his knees Friday after it turned out that much of his show, The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, was a work of fiction.

For six months, the show has been playing at the Public Theater, where it earned rave reviews from nearly every critic that counts, and was extended three times because of enormous ticket sales.

The piece is a monologue in which Daisey tells the story of going to visit Apple’s factories in China and discovers workers toiling in horrid conditions. The show helped bring public attention to labor practices abroad, and turned up the heat on an American company with a technology fanbase so religiously devoted, few dared suggest anything could possibly be wrong with it.

But it turns out that many of the stories he told were not exactly true—or that at the very least, much of what he described he did not apparently witness first-hand.

On Friday, This American Life, the popular radio show that had recently given an entire episode to Daisey, announced they’d discovered numerous problems with the monologist’s account of things.

For example, Daisey clamed to have met a man who’d lost part of his hand in a metal press while making the iPad, only to lose his job because he could no longer work at breakneck speed. Yet This American Life couldn't find any independent confirmation of the meeting.

Daisey also claimed to have spoken with a 13-year-old girl outside the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen who alleged that lots of teenagers worked there, and that no one ever bothered to check their IDs. Yet a translator working with Daisey during his visit had no recollection of this conversation. The translator said that she’d been at Daisey’s side virtually the entire time he was there.

By Friday night, the Public Theater had taken the unusual step of contacting the entire board of trustees in an attempt to minimize the embarrassment.

The organization was measured in its response, saying that while Daisey is an artist whose work should not be held to the conventional standards of journalism, they “nevertheless … wish he had been more precise with us and our audience about what was and wasn’t his personal experience in the piece.”

To his friends, the whole episode was particularly disappointing because the broad strokes of his piece appear to be largely true: the conditions in these factories are terrible. Lots of people have died there. Others have been disfigured.

Last month, The New York Times ran a 5,500-word front-page article about the conditions endured by Chinese workers, and nothing in it deviated considerably from the version of things Daisey had been presenting for the last six months.

So why did Daisey choose to embellish so many things? Why not just stick to describing what he actually saw?

According to one friend, his messianic zeal took over.

“One of his weaknesses is his sanctimoniousness,” says this person, who wished to remain anonymous. “That's true with most artists. Most playwrights don't like to see other people's plays, most writers are not kind of about other people's writing. Mike has made himself an easy target because he can't keep his mouth shut. He got really excited about the press. He didn't think what the consequences would be of writing an op-ed piece in The New York Times. He didn’t think about what it would mean to be quoted constantly about Apple. He just kept going.”

Furthermore, Daisey’s theater pieces are on some level agitprop, where there’s almost always a component of manipulating facts to sell a particular point of view. In the latest episode of This American Life, which is devoted to the controversy, he tries to put a brighter spin on this when asked if he considered the story about meeting poisoned workers a lie.

“I wouldn't express it that way," Daisey said. "I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip, and so when I was building the scene of that meeting, I wanted to have the voice of this thing that had been happening, that everyone had been talking about.”

“Does it matter if these things that you describe in the play didn’t happen?” Glass asked.

“Yeah, I think the truth always matters," Daisey responded. "I think the truth is tremendously important. I don’t live in a subjective universe where everything is up for grabs. I really do believe that stories should be subordinate to the truth.”

This is a question about which Daisey is clearly ambivalent. In 2006, he did a monologue called "Truth," in which he discussed fabulists like JT LeRoy, Stephen Glass, and James Frey. One thing he admits to the audience during the course of the show? A shared tendency with his subjects toward embellishing things.

[Dan T.]

I find it funny that Mad Mike curses Michael Moore in this thread. As if in the history of the world Michael Moore invented propaganda.