Glad to see this blow up in his face. Corporate victimization is a two-way street, and it's a little-discussed fact that companies of all sizes very often find themselves at the mercy of liars like this. At least he didn't sue them and get away with a large settlement like most do.
So how much was true and how much was a lie? So far, the accounts I've read say that there were no guns, that guy who had his hand crushed doesn't exist, and Daisey didn't see under-aged workers.
But they apparently really do work their guys incredibly hard, workers did threaten (and attempt) suicide, and some actually were poisoned by n-hexane.
Foxconn's suicide rate is significantly lower than many places in the US and lower than the Chinese average. This bugs me because these are simple stats to look up (never mind ignoring the problem places here at home).
Foxconn's suicide rate is significantly lower than many places in the US and lower than the Chinese average
This --repeated constantly-- doesn't say much. Statistics are very tricky to get right.
How does it relate with the average Chinese "suicide IN THE WORKPLACE" rate? It's one thing to kill yourself at home, and another to kill yourself at work.
Second, do they also count the suicide rate of Foxconn employees that choose to kill themselves OUTSIDE of the company buildings/campus? Or are just workplace suicides counted? Because then, the comparison to the "chinese average" is also skewed.
Third. How does the suicide rate of Foxconn workers compare to EMPLOYED chinese suicide rate? Because if the majority of chinese killing themselves are unemployed, poor, with financial difficulties etc, then Foxconn numbers could be above that average.
>It's one thing to kill yourself at home, and another to kill yourself at work.
And on the other hand they have huge dorms for workers which could skew the statistics in the other direction (off work counted as work). If the suicide rate is 10% of the general population rate then it's fair to say that it would take a lot of "skewing" for it to be significantly higher than the average. And that's sort of the point - when you hire 1 million low skilled employees you are bound to hire mentally unstable people - the kind that commits suicide over a relationship breakup, an argument, etc. So while it's possible that work conditions "triggered" the suicide they likely weren't "normal" individuals and it doesn't say much about working conditions at Foxconn - the suicide rate would have to be much higher than the average to claim that Foxconn is a deathtrap in which a normal person would commit suicide.
And that's sort of the point - when you hire 1 million low skilled employees you are bound to hire mentally unstable people - the kind that commits suicide over a relationship breakup, an argument, etc.
I think this is a little biased, if not "racist" (class-ist?). I also take offense at the "they likely weren't 'normal' individuals". Who said that highly skilled people are less "mentally unstable"? If anything, they can be much more fickle and prone to self-questioning over minor shit. In any way, the workers at those places weren't much lower of higher skilled than the majority of the Chinese population --which includes expansive masses of no degree holders, factory and retail workers and farmers.
(Let me unleash the anecdotal: Howard Hughes, Godel, Turing, Nash, the list of highly skilled guys turning cuckoo is huge. Not to mention highly skilled Asperger sufferers and the like).
>Who said that highly skilled people are less "mentally unstable"?
What I meant to say is that you do a lot less screening/bulk hire with low skilled workers so it's not going to affect the statistics/you're even more likely that you will be close to the averages than if you were doing interviewing/management.
I think this commonly cited statistic is highly misleading.
We don't know what the suicide rate is for all Foxconn employees. We do know that if you take the highly visible suicides that occurred over a short period at the main plant all in the same fashion and divide that by the total number of people we think are employed by Foxconn we get a low "suicide rate". That isn't remotely the same the same thing.
It's clear that these suicides were not random events.
What's more relevant IMHO is the role that Foxconn's extremely high benefits paid to the first suicide did in encouraging others to follow suit. This link is the most persuasive in my opinion, also salient is the fact that the suicieds stopped when the company made it clear they would not be continuing with overly generous payouts to people who commit suicides. {They did also put up nets if you want to argue the opposite.}
Does anyone have two side-by-side bullet point lists of what this guy said was true and what was false? With the former being far more interesting than latter.
Have you looked at Apple's supplier responsibility report? It's two clicks from their home page and lists basically everything that was true. (e.g. underage workers, aluminum dust explosions)
"'What I do is not journalism,' Daisey wrote. 'The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.'"
How many times are we going to hear this excuse -- and from how many "entertainers, not journalists," or "bloggers, not journalists," or "pundits, not journalists," or "novelists, not journalists" -- before we conclude that something is fundamentally flawed with the state of modern journalism? I don't care what Daisey chooses to call himself or his work; he knew full well that the claims he made would be interpreted as factual, and he did nothing to set the record straight until someone actually decided to fact-check him. (Where, for the record, were the fact checkers at TAL, or at any other rebroadcaster of Daisey's story?).
In our urge for salaciousness and timeliness, we've happily allowed our journalistic and storytelling ethics to atrophy. In this case, it's sad that someone with a genuinely compelling story to tell (Daisey) felt he needed to embellish the record to appeal to a set of audience expectations, real or imagined. Why wasn't the set of legitimately factual information deemed compelling enough for this story? Alternatively, if he truly felt that crossing into the realm of fiction was necessary to capture the artistic essence of this story, then why did he keep real names, real players, and real locations intact?
Many people share some blame in this phenomenon, as far as I'm concerned. The issue seems so pervasive as to be a broader problem of cultural expectations and incentives, and no longer a series of individual failings from a string of perpetrators (of whom Daisey is just the latest in a long line). Regardless, it's troubling.
As with many big lies, this one started small then snowballed as Daisey tried to cover his tracks.
Even though the motivation may have been pure -- to make people care about the real human costs of our consumerism -- in the end the lies have detracted from that cause.
"Even though the motivation may have been pure -- to make people care about the real human costs of our consumerism -- in the end the lies have detracted from that cause."
Exactly.
I'm all for the careful taking of artistic license to convey the emotional truth of a setting. But license extends only to one's impressions of a scene, and not to the factual details. There's clearly a line, between the "truth" of one's impression and outright fiction, that Daisey -- and others like him -- feel pretty comfortable crossing these days.
For example, let's imagine that I've just come back from touring a very dour, depressing factory in Shenzhen. The place was subject to severe security measures -- creating an atmosphere that would have been quite striking to any foreign visitor like myself. In order to express the emotional impact of what I saw, I might consider the following two sentences:
"The factory was under such tight surveillance that a patrol of armed guards around its perimeter wouldn't have seemed out of place."
or
"The factory was under such tight surveillance that armed guards patrolled its perimeter."
Both sentences convey the "emotional truth" of the scene, but the second is quite obviously a falsification. What troubles me is how free people today feel to go with Sentence 2. In fact, leaping that seemingly fine line places the entire story squarely in the domain of fiction. And the work should then be labeled and presented accordingly -- both by its author, and by those who exhibit it on his behalf.
To your point, even if 90% of Daisey's story is factually accurate -- even if 99% of it is -- that little bit of fabrication calls the validity of the entire piece into doubt. And that's a damned shame. It's so easy, and so tempting, to take one small step and wind up over a gaping brink.
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 journalistic failings fall on journalists. 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?
Rob 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 largely 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.
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