{"id":11208,"date":"2012-03-27T05:30:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T09:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geneveith.com\/?p=11208"},"modified":"2012-03-27T05:30:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T09:30:27","slug":"lying-to-tell-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Lying to tell the truth?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Mike Daisey has been performing a one-man-show entitled \u201cThe Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs\u201d in which he exposes the unsafe working condition in Apple factories in China.\u00a0 NPR picked up the story and interviewed Daisey on \u201cThis American Life\u201d about what he found out during a visit to one of these Chinese factories.\u00a0 It turned out that Daisey made up the more dramatic details.\u00a0 When this information came out, NPR retracted the interview.<\/p>\n

Consider this defense of Daisey from tech reporter Joshua Topolsky:<\/p>\n

Mike Daisey was lying.<\/p>\n

No, he didn\u2019t lie about all of it. He did go to southern China and meet with workers from Foxconn. He was there, all right, but he wasn\u2019t honest about what he\u2019d seen. There were no underage workers he\u2019d spoken with, there was no man with a maimed hand. In one passage of his show, \u00adDaisey talks about workers who had been poisoned by a gas called n-hexane. That part was true \u2014 there had been workers poisoned by this gas at an Apple contractor somewhere in China. But Daisey never spoke to them. Like many of the most upsetting moments in his show, Daisey simply fabricated the encounter.<\/p>\n

\nThe lies were so clear and so egregious that after learning the truth, \u201cThis American Life\u201d issued a retraction of its report by way of a new show \u2014 a show in which host Ira Glass confronted Daisey over the deception.\n

It\u2019s an uncomfortable listen. As Daisey is called out by Glass, you can hear the hesitation, the panic, and the fear in his voice. He doesn\u2019t offer much in the way of excuses. The main point he drives home is that he felt it was necessary to embellish his story in order to retain the \u201ctruth\u201d of the message of his show. He lied to tell the truth, basically.<\/p>\n

In some immediate way, this defense rings true. There are many documented cases of worker mistreatment and injuries in Foxconn factories. There have been reports of underage workers. There have been suicides. Some of the most important and honest revelations of these issues have come from Apple itself, which issues a supplier responsibility statement every year detailing both the improvements and problems it\u2019s having with international partners.<\/p>\n

But until the radio broadcast Daisey took part in \u2014 and many of the follow-up interviews he gave \u2014 this problem was never discussed in a such a big, public way. Daisey\u2019s lies inspired honest questions about the gadgets in our pockets. Did he betray the trust of the public and journalists by lying? The answer to this question is easy: Yes. But were the lies necessary?<\/p>\n

We have a tendency to tune out the things we don\u2019t like hearing. That is doubly true when money is involved. I\u2019m not suggesting that we didn\u2019t listen when Apple issued its report, and that we didn\u2019t pay attention when the Times published its findings. What I\u2019m saying is that sad songs have a way of sticking with us long after we\u2019ve heard them \u2014 and Daisey found a way to tell the sad, human part of this story. To make it catchy enough to stick, even if it was a lie.<\/p>\n

via Why Mike Daisey had to lie to tell the truth about Apple \u2013 The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So in order to expose abuse of workers he had to make up cases of the abuse of workers.\u00a0 In order to tell the truth, he had to lie.\u00a0\u00a0 Does this make any sense?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that fiction can tell the truth\u2013a novel can express truths about the human heart, even though its incidents never happened\u2013but, as Sir Philip Sydney has shown, fiction isn\u2019t a lie because it presents itself as imaginary.\u00a0 A lie, on the other hand, presents itself as truth.\u00a0 Which is what Mike Daisey did.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Daisey has been performing a one-man-show entitled \u201cThe Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs\u201d in which he exposes the unsafe working condition in Apple factories in China.\u00a0 NPR picked up the story and interviewed Daisey on \u201cThis American Life\u201d about what he found out during a visit to one of these Chinese factories.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,28,44],"tags":[198,1449,2254],"class_list":["post-11208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-literature","category-technology","tag-apple-computers","tag-mike-daisey","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\nLying to tell the truth?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mike Daisey has been performing a one-man-show entitled "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" in which he exposes the unsafe working condition in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lying to tell the truth?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mike Daisey has been performing a one-man-show entitled "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" in which he exposes the unsafe working condition in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-03-27T09:30:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/\",\"name\":\"Lying to tell the truth?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-03-27T09:30:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-03-27T09:30:27+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"Mike Daisey has been performing a one-man-show entitled \\\"The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs\\\" in which he exposes the unsafe working condition in\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2012\/03\/lying-to-tell-the-truth\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Lying to tell the truth?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. 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