'This American Life' retracts 'partially fabricated' Foxconn show

By Angela Moscaritolo

The makers of the national radio show This American Life have retracted a controversial episode about Apple factories in China that featured storyteller Mike Daisey.

"Regrettably, we have discovered that one of our most popular episodes was partially fabricated," a note on show's website reads. This week, the show will devote an hour to detailing the errors in the episode, called "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory."

The episode, which aired in January and has garnered 888,000 downloads, featured an abridged version of Mike Daisey's one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In the episode, Daisey recounted his personal trip to a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China where iPhones are made, in an effort to discover just who made the products that he professed to "worship."

"Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast," Ira Glass, the show's host and executive producer, wrote in a blog post Friday. "That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake."

On his own blog, Daisey defended his work, saying his show is a theatrical piece not intended to be journalism.

"What I do is not journalism," he wrote. "The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed This American Life to air an excerpt from my monologue. This American Life is essentially a journalistic --- not a theatrical --- enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations."

The errors in Daisey's episode were uncovered by Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz, who has reported on Foxconn and Apple's supply chain in China, according to a news release from the show. Schmitz tracked down Daisey's Chinese interpreter, who disputed much of what he said in the episode.

This American Life was planning a live presentation of Daisey's monologue at the Chicago Theatre on April 7. That show has now been cancelled.

While Daisey's story might have been partially fabricated, separate investigations by The New York Times and other media outlets have shined the spotlight on harsh conditions at Apple's supplier facilities in China, which have driven workers to despair and suicide. Foxconn, one of Apple's largest suppliers, has come under fire time and again in recent years for such issues. At least 14 workers in Foxconn plants in the Chinese cities of Shenzen and Chengdu have committed suicide since early 2010.

Daisey was recently part of a small group of protestors who showed up at Apple's Grand Central Terminal store to deliver a petition containing 250,000 sZapatillas Trail Running