Over the weekend, as just about anyone with electricity knows by now, the public radio program This American Life fell on its sword over its bad Apple episode. The gesture was a noble one. As CJR’s Ryan Chittum put it:
With the stunning news that This American Life is retracting its episode on Apple and Foxconn after finding that Mike Daisey misled them about fabrications in his story, it’s worth noting that Ira Glass and TAL are showing how a news organization should act when hit with a scandal like this.
The gesture was indeed something of a model for a journalistic outlet when it learns it has been misled. But I can’t shake the notion that what some consider Ira Glass’s classy response to the episode was just a tad self-serving, letting his program off the hook too easily for allowing it to happen in the first place.
Some background for those who haven’t turned on a radio in the past few days: In early January, This American Life, which is produced for Public Radio International by WBEZ Chicago, carried a lengthy segment by a man named Mike Daisey. The segment documented in minute detail the worker abuses he said he witnessed at plants in China that produce Apple’s iPad. It would have been a riveting piece of investigative journalism. Except that it wasn’t either investigative or journalism.
Daisey is a theatrical monologist. This American Life essentially passed off as factual reporting an excerpt based on his stage show, called The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. And—surprise!—it turns out Daisey never witnessed most of what he so dramatically recounts for his theater audiences. That inconvenient fact was discovered by Rob Schmitz, Shanghai correspondent for another Public Radio International the American Public Media show, Marketplace.*
As the dean of a journalism school and the head of a major public radio network in the Pacific Northwest that airs This American Life, I could do little but shake my head as I listened to this weekend’s This American Life edition, in which longtime host Ira Glass did his own version of Casablanca’s Captain Renault (“I’m shocked, shocked to find gambling is going on here”), attempting to cover negligence with outrage.
“I have such a weird mix of feelings about this,” he tells Daisey during “Act Two” of the weekend’s program (according to the official transcript), “because I simultaneously feel terrible, for you, and also, I feel lied to. And also I stuck my neck out for you. You know I feel like, I feel like, like I vouched for you. With our audience. Based on your word.”
But therein lies the rub. Based on Daisey’s word. In the original broadcast, Glass tells listeners:
Our staff did weeks of fact checking to corroborate Daisey’s findings.
In fact, by their own admission, This American Life’s producers never spoke to anyone Daisey allegedly interviewed or the Chinese translator who accompanied him. Memo to Glass: Fact-checking is about more than reading think tank reports. In the segment, Glass says his team asked Daisey for a phone number for the translator. Daisey claimed the number no longer worked. That is, apparently, as far as it went. But Marketplace’s Schmitz found her though a simple Google search.
In this weekend’s mea culpa, Schmitz spoke with Cathy Lee, the translator who worked with Daisey, and she told Schmitz that much of the story was fiction. At one point, Schmitz noted that the translator didn’t seem at all angry with Daisey:
Cathy Lee: He is a writer. So I know what he say is only maybe half of them or less actual. But he is allowed to do that right? Because he’s not a journalist.
Glass & Co. should have seen the red flags long before they ever made the first edit. Five minutes on the Internet would have turned up this headline from an October 1, 2006 New York Times review of one of Daisey’s shows:
THEATER REVIEW: Telling Tales About the Past, And Maybe Fudging Facts
Very well said. Glass:
"I feel lied to. And also I stuck my neck out for you. You know I feel like, I feel like, like I vouched for you. With our audience. Based on your word.”
This is classic throwing under the bus.
I've always been perplexed by the universal acclaim for TAL. It's an hour of this dude rambling haphazard interspersed with what is supposed to be edgy and tasteful musical accompaniment, and the whole operation seems to be an exercise in Glass being in love with himself, how odd and not-mainstream and unusual and unexpected his stories and topics and angles are. Instead of grapple with any major cultural, geopolitical or economic issues, Ira is content to, um, how can I say, indulge in a weekly act of self-servicing. I'm surprised he hasn't gone blind by now.
For that reason, the whole broo-ha-ha smacks of an inappropriate sense of self-importance. The show is already a silly, inconsequential, weekly liberal stroke-fest with silly tales, many no doubt apocryphal, many ADMITTEDLY apocryphal. All of the sudden THE OBJECTIVE NAME OF TAL HAS BEEN SULLIED AND THE NATION IS OWED AN EXPLANATION.
I don't buy it. What happened was the giant wave comprised of general special tech interests and specifically Apple, globalization fetishists and neo-liberals, Apple afficianados, and those who aim to please the above, finally found its opening, and the wave crashed down on Daisey.*
*Daisey, of course, acted very foolishly by lying.
#1 Posted by LorenzoStDuBois, CJR on Tue 20 Mar 2012 at 11:46 AM
Composed of, not comprised of.
Sorry, Merrill.
#2 Posted by LorenzoStDuBois, CJR on Tue 20 Mar 2012 at 01:21 PM
This seems like cherry-picking to make Glass look bad, or at least overlooking the several points in the episode where Glass explicitly says he takes the blame, it was his fault, the show made a mistake. The author is quoting an exchange between Glass and Daisey where Glass makes a damned good point: the theatrical monologist didn't just damage his own credibility, but Glass's, too. He's trying to see if Daisey will take some responsibility for his "larger truth" argument, to no avail.
However, Glass himself says to the audience that he should have killed the whole thing as soon as he found out the show couldn't talk to the translator. He takes the blame. As for Daisey, he deserves to be thrown under several mass-transit vehicles. But listening to the entire episode, I don't think Glass tries to evade having the final authority for putting it on the air. He is just trying to show his mistakes and show listeners how it happened.
#3 Posted by Brian O'Connor, CJR on Tue 20 Mar 2012 at 02:03 PM
Sadly, what is being lost is that there are legitimate reasons to assail Apple and its ethics.
Apple makes enormous profits on the backs of poorly paid, inadequately protected and, in some instances, abused workers. Apple only makes these profits because of its behavior with suppliers.
Let Apple try similar tactics in the USA. It would not get beyond the planning stage before its lawyers were screaming.
Apple might be admired for its design prowess, but the shine is off because of the company's convenient ethics.
#4 Posted by Joe, CJR on Tue 20 Mar 2012 at 03:34 PM
Cherry picking indeed. Here is the dean of an educational institution blowing an outstanding learning opportunity.
This American Life (and Ira Glass) is a highly regarded program that has garnered numerous awards, including three Peabody awards, and two George Polk Awards for Journalism, among others. For over 15 years, week after week, Glass and his TAL crew have been churning out quality programming. And then they did what all humans do if you're in the game long enough, they made a mistake.
Amazingly, in this day and age, they owned up to it immediately and faced it head on, devoting an entire episode to identifying and correcting the error. In fact, calling attention to it so the truth could be put out there. As Glass said himself, "...we want to be completely transparent about what we got wrong, and what we now believe is the truth."
Yet this small minded author, cloaking himself as the dean of a journalism school, can only point out what Glass has already done more than sufficiently himself. Why not spend the bulk of the article shining a light on the amazing, and rare, response from Glass and his team? This is the real learning opportunity here, for students and professionals alike. If this article is a representation of the educational priorities at today's journalism schools, it's a sad state of affairs.
I had assumed the author to be yet another academic, with no real world experience, but a quick Google search revealed something far worse: a failed professional who has turned to education. No accomplishments of any note, especially compared to Glass and his exceptional team. Sadly, he provides evidence for the incorrect adage, "Those who can't do, teach."
Amazingly, and not surprisingly, the google search of this dean revealed his name in a press release announcing that Dan Rather would be accepting The Edward R. Murrow Award from the author's institution this fall. The same Dan Rather who famously retired under pressure following "memo-gate," where fraudulent documents were presented as authentic. And this author dares call Mr. Glass self-serving?
A good journalist knows what the real story is.
#5 Posted by Pat Healey, CJR on Tue 20 Mar 2012 at 06:08 PM
Actually, the vast majority of Americans don't listen to public radio at all, so assuming that most generic folks would be aware of this is a bit brash. From reading the transcript of the original program to me it was clear that dramatic license was taken, but they blurred that with "Act Two: Act One" where they interviewed some independent analyst who confirmed Daisey. So the gist of Daisey was true, but stuff like the security guards with guns and the Evel Knievel off ramp was just dramatic license. I think Ira Glass was just blindsided by the independent fact checking, when no one fact checks someone's break up story. But when you are making allegations on the biggest corporation on the planet, you have to be held to the journalistic standard.
#6 Posted by Calwatch, CJR on Tue 20 Mar 2012 at 08:00 PM
all they had to do was say, just like they do in those big hollywood movies, inspired by an actual event...
then they could lie their you know what's off...
i feel abused and wonder how many of the TAL shows i've really enjoyed because i thought they were 'real' were really 'soap operas.' call me crazy, but i think this stuff matters.
#7 Posted by ken krimstein, CJR on Wed 21 Mar 2012 at 12:37 PM
It's interesting that Daisey is going to be damaged goods and I've seen a few stories where they recount how a journalist was regretfully tricked and had his credibility damaged from a lying source passing on untrue and unverified information, like Rathergate.
But it's funny how none of these stories include the sources who lie to journalists every day and the reporters who pass their lies on.
The narrative driven right wing think tanks? Drudge? Fox news? Climate science deniers?
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/21/448661/this-american-lie-climate-science-deniers/
Reprehensible rat f*ckers who have destroyed careers based on lies and edited tapes?
http://nadianaffe.com/part-ii-the-barn-incident/
These people aren't damaged goods. Steven Moore will still put crazy figures in his wsj editiorials, Dick Armey will flat out lie about health care, Karl rove will publish Nobel prize for dishonesty worthy dreck, and they will all get a seat on meet the press with David Gregory.
Ira Glass is the exception. Accountability is the exception. The David Gregory rule has long been it's not a reporter's role to challenge the source or to tell the truth. Is that role changing? Are journalists going to forsake civility for honesty, especially when civil dishonesty carries such little risk?
And what exactly constitutes the exceptions from the rule?
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 22 Mar 2012 at 03:19 PM