Wrong. Mike Daisey presented his lies AS FACTS to reputable news organizations.
I'm not wrong. I said that he's not a journalist, and that's true. He's a playwright.
Beyond that, and beyond what I heard him say on This American Life, I have no idea. The man could be a pathological liar. But he's not a journalist, and never pretended to be one.
What I found interesting in the This American Life episode over the weekend is that Mike Daisey claimed that the reason why he didn't retract his story before is that he was afraid that it would undo all the 'good it had done' in spreading 'the truth'. At the same time, he suggested that it was he felt it was his best work yet. I suspect that he really feared the disintegration of 'his best work' when the lies were uncovered, and his supposed fear of un-doing the 'good' his story has done was really just another layer of justification. There are certain personality types that will justify anything questionable that they do - and those justifications are often complex with many layers.
Has no one considered the possibility that this Chinese citizen, who lives and works in China, might not be well served by asserting the truth of Daisey's story?
His apology seems to concede a fair amount of dramatization, and he didn't (in advance of hearing the Ira/Mike conversation) appear to assert the truth of those specific parts of the story. But supposing he did stand by some of these details, we'd have a he said/she said, with strong incentives on each side.
One of the unfortunate aspects of this episode is that, as Daisey says, the problems he discusses are mostly real. He didn't have to lie.
For example, he could have talked about the N-Hexane poisoning without lying. He could have cited news reports, or traveled to interview people, or done it over the phone, or even gotten the info from secondhand interviews. He could have said "imagine a man who..." and proceeded to paint a painful picture based on the facts that were already public.
But he didn't. He chose to pretend he had met these people. He would say that made the story more emotionally impactful, and maybe that's true. But it also poisoned it. It was a very condescending move to pull on his audiences; there is neither artistic nor factual integrity in it.
If he had stuck to the facts, he would still have had a great performance. Too bad.
But you don't help fixing problems by telling a lie about them, you just make it more difficult for those trying to tell the truth about the issue. It does not seem Daisey understands that he has hurt the cause he claims he was trying to help.
That brings up an interesting point in that there are two distinct victims of slander, the person being slandered (Apple, Foxconn) and the innocent dupe (me) who believes the slanderous story.
I stepped up to defend Mike Daisey here and in other places, largely because of my respect for This American Life and the way they take journalism seriously. If Ira Glass tells me he's fact-checked something, then I'm going to believe it.
So I'm glad to see he's being more contrite these days, but I agree that he's falling short of what he needs to do.
I listened to the follow up piece by Ira Glass.. It seems that Mike D. has done the same thing to someone else's autobiography (i.e twisted the truth) and went back to the "theater" claim when he was caught.
I am no psychologist, but listening to his 'apology' gave me a strong sense that he was playacting a role of someone who sought forgiveness. He had these dramatic pauses that seemed forced, and was dancing around technicalities. I don't think this is the last time someone is duped by him.
My biggest problem with Daisey? The fact that the only thing he gains from his fabrications is self-aggrandizement.
So many of the things he claims to have seen aren't in essence untrue: hexane poisoning did happen, he just didn't meet (and tell a true story) about how. Underage workers do exist, but I think it is less than clear whether Daisy met any of them. Terrible abuses resulting in lasting, terrible physical damage (or death) clearly are occurring, but Daisey isn't the one uncovering them, he isn't the heroic reporter interviewing the victims to reveal their plight.
When Daisey defends his work, he's really defending himself as the champion of the oppressed. This, I think, is really about his ego, not about the plight of any abused Chinese worker.
But his admissions and the public and transparent nature of the fraud are effectively equivalent. Anyway, now that action is being taken I’m placated :)
With the claims of using "dramatic license," it sounds like he's trying to have it both ways, especially since he was on Real Time with Bill Maher recently, and a lot of these things that turned out to be fabricated he mentioned in the interview as though they were fact: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iebnHvxKqlY
reply