Apple And Foxconn - A Fabricated Scandal

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." -Winston Churchill


I stumbled across an interesting little sidebar tale shortly after posting my last article about the release of the latest Apple iPad. Someone on Twitter sent me a note that they were boycotting Apple products because of the Foxconn situation. Having never heard of Foxconn, my first thought was that Apple must be advertising on Fox News and the person who messaged me was opposed to that but I decided I should probably do some quick research just to confirm that and so I did.

On January 6, This American Life aired a documentary by independent producer Mike Daisey about the manufacturing of Apple products like the iPad, the iPod and the iPhone at a plant in China called Foxconn. The documentary detailed dangerous working conditions, abuse of employees and basically put Apple in the same category as a 19th century sweat shop.

It appears that the folks at This American Life have pulled the documentary and are retracting its content declaring it inaccurate and somewhat fabricated. It should be noted that they were not responsible for the content and that they are dedicating an hour program to correcting the misleading information presented in the documentary that aired.

Mike Daisey documentary journalist
turned entertainer

Apparently, Mr. Daisey didn’t feel that he was engaging in journalism when he produced his documentary or at least, that's his spin now that the jig is up. He stated, “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 went on to state, “It uses a combination of fact, memoir and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.”

Excuse me? We now call making stuff up and presenting it as fact, integrity?

This is one of those tiny little stories that usually whip by unnoticed but which are representative of the real problem in our society today. Consider the objective of what Mr. Daisey now calls entertainment but was nothing more than a melange of some fact and a lot of  fiction. He wanted to create a “human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge.”

Wait a minute. If the “brutal circumstances from which they emerge” were fabricated as “entertainment” rather than journalism, what is the real point of this piece?

I believe that the real point was yet one more example of somebody with a biased opinion blending a bit of fact with a lot of opinionated fabrications to justify and validate their point. There is no dramatic license when you are presenting something as factual about someone or something else. It is either true or it isn't. This was a deliberate attempt to prove a point that was not supported by the facts so…..some facts were made up.

I call it the Wikipedia - Guitar Hero Syndrome or Wikipedia - Guitar Hero Syndrome for short.

Wikipedia is a lovely, egalitarian concept where anyone who wants can add stuff to anything regardless of whether or not it is true. The concept is that eventually, after enough people have viewed and edited the material, it will be accurate. The problem is that during the period of evolution, many thousands of people may have been exposed to the incorrect information.

This was underscored this past week when Soledad O’Brien, from CNN used Wikipedia as her source for information about Critical Race Theory. That particular Wikipedia entry has been updated no less than 82 times since Ms O’Brien’s shortcut to inaccuracy and being a Harvard graduate, she really should have known better.

I don’t fault Wikipedia, the concept is interesting but we are now the ‘shortcut’ generation. People are looking for quick information, quick resolution and quick instant gratification. In other words, we’re looking for the shortcut to get what we want. Why learn to play the guitar when you can buy Guitar Hero and have your every musical dream fulfilled without any effort or talent required?

Personally, it’s not all that surprising or important except for the fact that the same lazy attitude to attaining what we want is now seeping into all areas of how we think. Why bother to properly research something when we can grab it off Wikipedia in a flash or from any one of thousands of blogs and websites that will support our opinion?

We no longer formulate what we think or believe based on what we are learning or have learned from reliable sources. We pick up our information online from sources that confirm our suspicions and which too often bend facts and even invent some to fit their opinions. In the process we are not only being intellectually dishonest, we are dumbing down society as a whole.

It really doesn’t get much more stupid than presenting a documentary that is full of errors and outright fabrications  as factual and then trying to pass it off as entertainment after your caught for sloppy and dishonest journalism.

Mr. Daisey can claim what he likes about his piece now but the simple fact remains. He made no attempt prior to his 'piece' being aired to qualify it as entertainment rather than a fact-filled documentary. It was a dishonest and deliberate attempt to prove a point by misleading those who listened to the piece, a point that doesn't actually exist except in Mr. Daisey's mind and those now of countless people who bought into the misrepresentation.. It slandered a corporation with fabrications and that created the usual tidal wave of uninformed social media condemnation. No amount of rationalization or obfuscation is going to change that.

It's reminiscent of the "Vaccinations Cause Autism" scandal which lead hundreds of thousands to stop vaccinating their children based on a deliberately fraudulent medical study produced in England. To this day, there are still people who believe that vaccinations cause autism even though the study was proven to have been deliberately fabricated to help a pharmaceutical company.

This is the era we live in now, an era where opinion trumps fact and facts can be invented when they don't support our opinions.  It's a dangerous business and one of which people need to become more aware.

There was a time when the dissemination of accurate information was almost a sacred trust. That time is gone. Today, we lie to each other but more importantly, increasingly we lie to ourselves.

LINKS

This American Life Retracts Apple Story
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/03/16/radios_this_american_life_retracts_apple_story/

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