How a Google Search Unraveled Mike Daisey’s Apple-Foxconn Story

Exactly.

I'm all for the careful taking of artistic license to convey the emotional truth of a setting. But license extends only to one's impressions of a scene, and not to the factual details. There's clearly a line, between the "truth" of one's impression and outright fiction, that Daisey -- and others like him -- feel pretty comfortable crossing these days.

For example, let's imagine that I've just come back from touring a very dour, depressing factory in Shenzhen. The place was subject to severe security measures -- creating an atmosphere that would have been quite striking to any foreign visitor like myself. In order to express the emotional impact of what I saw, I might consider the following two sentences:

"The factory was under such tight surveillance that a patrol of armed guards around its perimeter wouldn't have seemed out of place."

or

"The factory was under such tight surveillance that armed guards patrolled its perimeter."

Both sentences convey the "emotional truth" of the scene, but the second is quite obviously a falsification. What troubles me is how free people today feel to go with Sentence 2. In fact, leaping that seemingly fine line places the entire story squarely in the domain of fiction. And the work should then be labeled and presented accordingly -- both by its author, and by those who exhibit it on his behalf.

To your point, even if 90% of Daisey's story is factually accurate -- even if 99% of it is -- that little bit of fabrication calls the validity of the entire piece into doubt. And that's a damned shame. It's so easy, and so tempting, to take one small step and wind up over a gaping brink.

This --repeated constantly-- doesn't say much. Statistics are very tricky to get right.

How does it relate with the average Chinese "suicide IN THE WORKPLACE" rate? It's one thing to kill yourself at home, and another to kill yourself at work.

Second, do they also count the suicide rate of Foxconn employees that choose to kill themselves OUTSIDE of the company buildings/campus? Or are just workplace suicides counted? Because then, the comparison to the "chinese average" is also skewed.

Third. How does the suicide rate of Foxconn workers compare to EMPLOYED chinese suicide rate? Because if the majority of chinese killing themselves are unemployed, poor, with financial difficulties etc, then Foxconn numbers could be above that average.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

We don't know what the suicide rate is for all Foxconn employees. We do know that if you take the highly visible suicides that occurred over a short period at the main plant all in the same fashion and divide that by the total number of people we think are employed by Foxconn we get a low "suicide rate". That isn't remotely the same the same thing.

It's clear that these suicides were not random events.

What's more relevant IMHO is the role that Foxconn's extremely high benefits paid to the first suicide did in encouraging others to follow suit. This link is the most persuasive in my opinion, also salient is the fact that the suicieds stopped when the company made it clear they would not be continuing with overly generous payouts to people who commit suicides. {They did also put up nets if you want to argue the opposite.}