NPR attacks Apple, makes stuff up?

[billc]

Saw this story, wonder if it is accurate...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/03/17/NPR

A highly popular episode of This American Life in which monologist Mike Daisey tells of the abuses at factories that make Apple products in China contained "significant fabrications," the show said today.​

"We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio," Ira Glass, the show's executive producer and host said in a blog post today. "Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards."​

But NPR wasn't the first media outlet which helped promote Daisey's tales. Daisy's show actually debuted in 2010 in Washington, DC. When Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, the NY Times reached out to Daisey. They published an op-ed by him the following day in which he related one of the heart-wrenching stories from his show:

I have traveled to southern China and interviewed workers employed in the production of electronics. I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on. He stroked the screen and marveled at the icons sliding back and forth, the Apple attention to detail in every pixel. He told my translator, "It’s a kind of magic."​

Magic is the perfect word since it now seems clear that Daisey conjured it out of thin air. Cathy Lee, the woman who served as Daisey's interpreter on his trip to China, says simplythat nothing of the sort occurred. When confronted with the facts, Daisey responded, "I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard... My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater." Much has been made of Jon Stewart's "clown nose on/clown nose off" defense when responding to criticism. It's all very serious until he's challenged, then he feigns surprise that anyone would take him seriously in the first place. We've seen something similar this week from Bill Maher. In an interview with Jake Tapper, he explained that his comments about conservative women can't be held against him because he's a comic:

I’m a comedian – not just a guy who says he is, like Rush, but someone who – well, you saw me do stand-up last year in D.C. There’s a big difference...​

Daisey's explanation, "it's theater," is the same thing. Now that his story has been shown to be a fabrication, he retreats behind the curtain and explains that he's a performer to whom journalistic standards should not apply.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

This American Life just devoted an entire episode to retracting the claims that Daisey had made, explaining how they got fooled, apologizing for not fact-checking Daisey's story more carefully, and reviewing what is reliably known about working conditions in the Chinese factories where electronic products are manufactured for Apple and other technology companies.

As far as corrections go, I'd say that's better than most media outlets do when they make a mistake.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

And all other 'facts' aside, the nets on the buildings exist; there to catch suicidal workers. That says something right there.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Here is the link to the TAL episode with the retraction.

BTW - This American Life is distributed by PRI, not NPR. The fabrications were discovered by another public radio journalist - Marketplace's China correspondent Rob Schmitz..

 

[CanuckMA]

A radio broadcast was made which contained inaccurate information. It was found out, and a retraction and apology was made. I fail to see the large issue here.

 

[billc]

This just goes to show that with Steve Jobs dead, the protection they used to have from the left no longer exists. It is now their turn to be taken down.

 

[elder999]

This just goes to show that with Steve Jobs dead, the protection they used to have from the left no longer exists. It is now their turn to be taken down.

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