Rob Schmitz, the China correspondent for Marketplace, has a story up about the Daisey situation:
For years, reporters in China have uncovered a sizable list of problems that have shown the dark side of what itâs like to work at factories that assemble Apple products. Mike Daisey would have you believe that he encounteredâfirst-handâsome of the most egregious examples of this history all in just a six-day trip he took to the city of Shenzhen.
Take one example from his monologueâit takes place at a meeting he had with an illegal workers union. He meets a group of workers whoâve been poisoned by the neurotoxin N-Hexane while working on the iPhone assembly line: ââŚand all these people have been exposed,â he says. âTheir hands shake uncontrollably. Most of themâŚcan't even pick up a glass.â
...last week, together with Ira Glass, the host of This American Life Host, I confronted Daisey in an interview. I brought up the workers he says he met who were poisoned by N-hexane. I tell him what Cathy [his translator] said.
Rob Schmitz: Cathy says you did not talk to workers who were poisoned with hexane.
Mike Daisey: Thatâs correct.
RS: So you lied about that? That wasnât what you saw?
MD: I wouldnât express it that way.
RS: How would you express it?
MD: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip.
Ira Glass: Did you meet workers like that? Or did you just read about the issue?
MD: I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been, and it was a constant conversation among those workers.
IG: So you didnât meet an actual worker whoâd been poisoned by hexane.
MD: Thatâs correct.
For the hundredth time: I respect Mike and what he doesâhe's an extraordinarily talented writer, storyteller, and performer. But fooling with facts like theseâand then waiting until you're caught to say "hey, it's just theater"âis bad business.