Turns out @MDaisey made up a lot of elements in his piece, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”, which deals with the questionable way in which we get our shiny Apple products. Unfortunately, there were small and large lies told in the process, and This American Life is retracting the whole thing after a piece in Marketplace came out.  Meanwhile, Mike Daisey’s standing by his story, as “theatre” and not “journalism”.  I loved his work, and saw “If You See Something Say Something”, but I think Mike Daisey’s done a big disservice to human rights interests — the headline is likely to be “Apple’s just fine, it was all a crazy liberal lie”. I’m disappointed, to say the least.

Max Fisher at the Atlantic explains the consequences of this news well:

Now, the story isn’t Chinese labor abuses anymore. The story is Daisey’s own dishonesty, which tinges everything he touched — the made-up details as well as the truth behind them — as compromised and untrustworthy. The people who already know about Chinese labor abuses will immediately see where Daisey’s lies end and the truth begins. Those who don’t — the vast majority, who could help change the world for the better simply by expressing a preference for ethically manufactured iPads — might have a harder time figuring out where the line is. They know they were moved by Daisey’s 40-minute monologue about exploring Chinese factory towns first-hand, and they know that the monologue had to be retracted as a lie.

Remember that Iraq war? The Brookings Institute estimates that 115,250 Iraqi civilians were killed in the last ten years.

“An article published … by the Centers for Disease Control [reported] that about 20 people a year are killed by cows in the United States… . In 16 cases, “the animal was deemed to have purposefully struck the victim,” the report states… . All but one victim died from head or chest injuries; the last died after a cow knocked him down and a syringe in his pocket injected him with an antibiotic meant for the cow. In at least one case, the animal attacked from behind.” —The Times.

Listened to this last night - it was incredible. A two-year operation to catch a “terrorist” - except what really happens is so confounding: the US government sends an informant to buy a missile from a suspected crook, and then, frustrated, supplies the crook with said missile to sell to the informant in order to complete their strike. And the one juror who thinks this might be entrapment decides to cave, because she’s trying to close a deal on a house and wants jury duty to end. So full of ironies and interesting conflicts; if only it were fiction. I think they should make a George Clooney movie out of this.