Last weekend, This American Life posted a retraction of an earlier episode, one that had touched off much of the criticism of FoxConn and Apple. The person who submitted the original piece is Mike Daisey, a performer who maintains that his monologue is true.
Ira Glass, host/producer of This American Life felt that Daisey had lied. Accusing someone of lying is pretty harsh.
Glass is a journalist; journals are expected to be accurate and factual. Daisey on the other hand is expected to entertain and even non-fiction, when it falls under the “creative” banner, does not need to adhere to the same rules as a fact-checked article.
The problem is that Glass saw “non fiction” from the journalist’s point of view (i.e. names, places, times, and dates should be accurate and verifiable) whereas Daisey never intended it to hold up to the same level of scrutiny. He admits that the people (characters) he discusses were not all in one place at one time. His story presents an amalgam of anecdotes that are true but he used the tools of a writer to weave them into one piece.
Full disclosure:
- I never listened to the original piece and had no clue who Mike Daisey was before all this hit the news (I actually heard it from Alec Baldwin on Twitter. Yeah, that Alec Baldwin.)
- When I saw Baldwin’s tweet and read Glass’ blog post on the topic, I retweeted and shared the story with the reckless abandon that social media affords.
- When I listened to the Retraction episode, I was annoyed by the whole thing.
Ultimately, this is all on Glass. He recognized the story as a good story so he ran with it. He didn’t dig too deep into the fact-checking because he wanted to believe it; it felt true. He didn’t pull the emergency stop, though. Another journalist called bullshit and threw some facts at Glass who had no other option but to retract it as a news piece even though it was never a news piece to begin with.
The best stories, be they movies, plays, autobiographies or articles, are those that have the ring of truth (or as Stephen Colbert might say, those that radiate truthiness). The best stories are those in which we can recognize the characters and can imagine the situations in which they find themselves. Daisey delivered exactly that — and it became the most downloaded episode of This American Life to date.
I’ll bet “Retraction” tops it because as every good journalist will tell you, there’s no such thing as bad press.
Further Reading & discussion:
- full text of Mike Daisey’s monologue, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.
- This American Life, episode 460: Retraction.
- a fine rant on the topic by Shane Birley
Photo “lie, lie, lie” CC-BY Tilemahos on Flickr.