Comment by jonnathanson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonnathanson | Hacker News Reader

"'What I do is not journalism,' Daisey wrote. 'The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.'"

How many times are we going to hear this excuse -- and from how many "entertainers, not journalists," or "bloggers, not journalists," or "pundits, not journalists," or "novelists, not journalists" -- before we conclude that something is fundamentally flawed with the state of modern journalism? I don't care what Daisey chooses to call himself or his work; he knew full well that the claims he made would be interpreted as factual, and he did nothing to set the record straight until someone actually decided to fact-check him. (Where, for the record, were the fact checkers at TAL, or at any other rebroadcaster of Daisey's story?).

In our urge for salaciousness and timeliness, we've happily allowed our journalistic and storytelling ethics to atrophy. In this case, it's sad that someone with a genuinely compelling story to tell (Daisey) felt he needed to embellish the record to appeal to a set of audience expectations, real or imagined. Why wasn't the set of legitimately factual information deemed compelling enough for this story? Alternatively, if he truly felt that crossing into the realm of fiction was necessary to capture the artistic essence of this story, then why did he keep real names, real players, and real locations intact?

Many people share some blame in this phenomenon, as far as I'm concerned. The issue seems so pervasive as to be a broader problem of cultural expectations and incentives, and no longer a series of individual failings from a string of perpetrators (of whom Daisey is just the latest in a long line). Regardless, it's troubling.

The TAL retraction explains this pretty well -- what fact-checking they did, how they let Daisey slide on identifying his translator, etc.

PDF transcript here http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retracti...

As with many big lies, this one started small then snowballed as Daisey tried to cover his tracks.

Even though the motivation may have been pure -- to make people care about the real human costs of our consumerism -- in the end the lies have detracted from that cause.

"Even though the motivation may have been pure -- to make people care about the real human costs of our consumerism -- in the end the lies have detracted from that cause."

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.

The motivation was not "pure". Mike Daisey lied for money and self-promotion.

What is fundamentally flawed with the state of journalism is not what Mike Daisey does. He's an actor who created a one man show.

What is flawed is that journalists continue to mistake his one man show for investigative reporting.

The journalistic failings fall on journalists. Ira Glass from the transcript of the original This American Life piece:

  When I saw Mike Daisey perform this story on stage,
  when I left the theater I had a lot of questions.
  I mean, he's not a reporter, and I wondered,
  did he get it right?

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/t...

Rob Schmitz should be able to distinguish between a news report and entertainment. He should be able to provide context for the large themes in Daisey's performance given that they largely coincide with his own journalistic reports for Marketplace. He could have done actual journalism, instead he conflated theater with journalism and then revealed it as theater while pretending to conduct journalism.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/apple-economy/app...

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/apple-economy/china-c...

Rob Schmitz's investigation is the journalistic equivalent to revealing that Julius Caesar could not have said:

  Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
  To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say,
  The barren, touched in this holy chase,
  Shake off their sterile curse.

Because he did not speak Elizabethan English.

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