This American Life is perhaps my favorite radio program. The mix of storytelling, humor, and (more and more recently) news appeals to me.
I listened to the Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory episode while waiting for what was to be an overnight flight home from a business trip. I had just taken two benadryl tablets to make sure I slept on the flight and played the podcast back at double speed on my iPhone to make sure I’d hear the whole thing before they closed the door of the airplane and asked me to shut off all my dangerous electronic devices. I planned to be asleep moments after that.
I came away with three impressions. First and foremost, Mike Daisey speaks slowly. Even playing the audio at double speed he seemed to be speaking slowly. I suppose this is for dramatic effect, but wow.
Secondly I thought it was impressive that this guy had hopped on a plane and uncovered as much as he did in such a short time. Perhaps he had been speaking quickly while in China, because he got a lot done. Visited a bunch of factories, spent two days talking to workers outside a Foxconn plant, toured a dormitory, and had secret meetings with an illegal union. The idea of unions being illegal in China struck me as an interesting tidbit. Who needs a union if you’re already a communist, the worker’s party?
In my nearly drugged state it did not occur to me that Mr. Daisey was taking some dramatic license with his story. Perhaps it should have. Which leads me to my third impression: if slow talking storyteller Daisey could show up in China, hire a translator, and witness all these problems, then they must be widespread. You don’t just show up in a country and happen to find that much misery, even if you are looking for it. The idea that he witnessed this personally amplified the impact of the story. It made you wonder what else was there that he hadn’t seen, if abuses are so rampant that he could wander in and witness so many.
But it turns out that he didn’t see what he said he saw. This American Life has retracted the entire episode and done a new episode to dissect what went wrong and how. I listened to this on normal speed and Daisey speaks even more slowly. In addition to the slow talking there are the pauses, as Daisey’s is either searching for words or trying frantically to will himself invisible. Pauses that go on so long you wonder if the battery has run out on your iPhone.
Here’s the complicated part. Aside from some details about the location of security cameras and private guards having guns much of what Daisey speaks of happened, but he didn’t witness it. There have been cases of underage workers, there have been n-hexane exposure incidents, and there are injured workers. Daisey insists that the rules of journalism and the rules of the theater are different and that it was wrong of him to present the material on This American Life because there it is presented in the context of journalism.
There are all sorts of questions that could be raised around the distinctions that he’s trying to make. The one I think is most interesting is, why take dramatic license at all? I’d suggest looking at two other This American Life guests.
Malcolm Gladwell is a well known author and journalist. In 2008 This American Life featured a piece by him in the episode Tough Room. It is hilarious. If you are unfamiliar with it you should go listen to it now before reading further.
Gladwell recounts his entry into the profession of journalism, and how he and a colleague had a contest to insert certain phrases into articles in the Washington Post. The problem is that it didn’t happen. So here is a journalist, talking about journalism, and so you think that he would be using the standards of journalism in reporting on his reporting. Which is what gives the story its impact. If you thought he was just making this up as a funny story it wouldn’t be very funny at all. It is funny because of it’s “you couldn’t make this up” quality. But he did make it up. Ira Glass adds a disclaimer at the end, which is ambiguous at best.
David Sedaris is a frequent guest on This American Life. A search for his name on their website results in six long pages of results. He is an author and humorist, who tells tales from his impossibly amusing life. I once was so engrossed in one of his books that I spent an afternoon reading it poolside and ended up blistered all over my body from sunburn. I had thought I was in the shade. In any case, I would do it again as the book was that good.
He’s also making stuff up. As with Gladwell this is in the realm of comedy, but it isn’t just a funny story he’s telling. He’s telling stories from his own life, so the listener tends to assume that he’s telling them as they happened.
So when Mike Daisey, storyteller, presents his story to This American Life, what is he to think? They tell him it has to meet the standards of journalism, yet journalist Malcolm Gladwell has flouted these by telling an untrue story about flouting the rules of journalism.
They tell him they want to verify that what he claims happened to him happened to him, yet David Sedaris, who is perhaps the most frequent guest in the history of the show, has been shown to embellish his stories.
Part of the problem is that the show has evolved over the years. It has gone from more story focused to more long form journalism. And Daisey embellished his story for the same reason that Gladwell and Sedaris did. To make it have more impact.
Most of the things he reported have happened, at some point, in some Apple supplier. But he didn’t witness him, and they aren’t rampant. But if he said that, what impact would his story have? A mere fraction of the impact of the story he actually told.
Finally, labor conditions in the developing world are very much a worthy topic of conversation and action. That said, This American Life dropped the ball in their final segment of program in describing one way in which listeners could think about the issues involved. There are multiple ways to think about the issues involved, and the most reasonable one was left unmentioned. Paul Krugman’s article In Praise of Cheap Labor expressed this viewpoint well. Jobs at Foxconn and the like are more desirable than working in rural agriculture for less money. This is how economies develop.
In addition, holding Apple’s feet to the fire simply because they’re the most recognizable company here is not the most productive way to address the problem. Countless other companies have suppliers with worse practices. Does going after Apple have a positive impact on those in the worst conditions? Why wouldn’t This American Life, in the interest of journalism, have presented this other framework for thinking about labor conditions in the developing world?
I’ll continue to listen to This American Life, perhaps with a more critical ear in the future. I’ll continue to buy Apple products, as long as I judge them to be the best tools for the jobs I want to do. And I assume that Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, and Mike Daisey will continue telling stories. But only one of them will do so slowly.
