currents

Hard Numbers

Retracting "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory"
May 17, 2012

888,000 downloads of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” the January 6 This American Life episode based on Mike Daisey’s one-man play that chronicled his travels to the Foxconn factory in China where Apple products are manufactured

750,000 typical number of downloads for a TAL episode

73,000 Google searches for “Mike Daisey” in the week following the original TAL broadcast

-.16 percent change in Apple’s stock price over the weekend following the Friday, January 6, broadcast of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory”

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256,425 (and counting) signatures on a Change.org petition calling for Apple to improve conditions in its China factories, following the original TAL broadcast


891,000 downloads of “Retraction,” the hour-long TAL mea culpa that explained how numerous inaccuracies were uncovered in the Daisey story after the fact


9 number of times the word “lie” or “lied” was used in TAL’s retraction episode


127,000 Google searches for “Mike Daisey” in the week following TAL’s retraction


+2.65 percent change in Apple’s stock price over the weekend following the Friday, March 16, broadcast of “Retraction”


3,000,000 number of the new iPad 3s sold in the four days following its release on March 16


486 (and counting) signatures on a petition to withdraw the Change.org petition following the “Retraction” episode

The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.