Why someone would fabricate information about human rights violations involving Apple in China is anyone’s guess, but according to Public Radio International essay-style weekly This American Life, that’s just what happened during what became its most popular podcast ever. In fact the show’s host, Ira Glass, says Mike Daisey — the man whose allegations about Apple’s Chinese labor practices triggered a public relations firestorm — was flatly dishonest with him. As such, Glass says he’s officially pulling the story, effective immediately. [...]
Daisey, for his part, has already responded on his website, stating that he stands by his work, and writing the fabrications off as artistic license. “My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge,” he says. “It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.”
It seems to me that he is using Artistic License as an excuse to lie.
ReplyDeleteIf you talk to Chinese who actually work in these factories, they do not find their conditions to be appalling. To us, 200 years after the start of our Industrial Revolution, they are appalling, but the Chinese have different standards. Apple is not responsible for the conditions, nor is it their responsibility to raise the standards to those of the West. China will do that in time on its own.