You Must Hear This: This American Life Retracts Apple Story -- A Liar Gets Caught

Edited for clarity - 10:03 p.m., March 16, 2012.
The original post read like a live blog reaction to the show, which was fine...unless you weren't listening to the show. I've added more background and context. There are many articles out there about this story. I recommend this one from The New York Times.


Original Post
If you didn't have the chance to listen to it live, this week's episode of This American Life is riveting. It's a story unlike any other they've ever done -- a complete retraction of an earlier broadcast. They've posted the podcast and stream early, and you can listen to it here: Retraction.

Like #stopkony the original This American Life story ("Mr.Daisey and the Apple Factory")went viral in social media and people were spurned to various levels of clicktivism, slacktivism and, perhaps, social action. In it, activist and storyteller Mike Daisey reported on his personal investigation into how Apple treats its workers in Chinese factories, particularly the conglomerate Foxconn.

Mike Daisey has now admitted lying -- taking shortcuts, he calls it -- but defends his work as being art and memoir with a purpose. He wanted to make listeners and Ira Glass about this issue. Ironically, this is the same defense that James Frey (whom Daisey once excoriated in a monologue) used when defending his "memoir," A Million Little Pieces, which fooled Oprah, sold millions of copies and turned out to be a fabrication,

Daisey's apology is limited to regretting putting his piece on This American Life and that his "theatrical presentation" was seen as journalism. Ira Glass doesn't buy it, though, saying that he took Daisey at his word and that he's been lied to.

Ira Glass had a much bigger mea culpa to offer, and he now admits that he should have killed the story as soon as Daisey refused to let the This American Life fact checkers talk to his sources and translators.

I can't help but wonder how much traction this edition of This American Life will have, and how many of Daisey's stories will be repeated as fact form now on. A radio show like this is in a unique position to give as much air time to the correction as it did the mistake, and kudos to them for making such a big deal of this retraction and admitting the mistake. They could have taken the easy way out and used a blog post or a note on their web site to deal with this issue.

I appreciate their honesty, and I do feel as if I can trust the show for the truth in the future. If anything, having recovered from this mistake, we can probably all trust them more.

UPDATES
Click here to read Ira Glass's blog on the whole shenanigan.
Click here to read the New York Times series of stories that Ira mentioned at the end of the episode: The iEconomy.