A few months ago, there was a wonderful episode of This American Life—#454: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory—in which the show featured the experiences of one Mike Daisey’s visit to an Apple contractor in China. The show was an emotionally super-charged look at the deplorable conditions that workers in electronics factories endure every day, to produce the shiny gadgets that you and I enjoy Angry Birds on.
Recently, This American Life released another wonderful episode—#460: Retraction—after discovering that Mr. Daisey had fabricated many of the details making up the heart of the previous piece. This episode, rife with awkward pauses, attempted to separate fact from fiction as the host and correspondents of the show confronted Mr. Daisey.
Huzzah for journalistic integrity, if that is something you care about. But that’s not how we roll here on actuality.log, where the story is always more important than the facts.
I leave you with a select quote from Mr. Daisey that adequately captures my feelings on the matter:
“I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work that I know is really good and tells a story, that does these really great things for making people care, that it would come apart in a way where it would ruin everything.”