What was Mike Daisey’s monologue about? What elements of the monologue were inaccurate or completely made up? And what was the public reaction to Daisey’s fiasco?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2010, monologue writer and performer Mike Daisey committed literary fraud. He invented details in a non-fiction monologue about working conditions in Apple factories that he performed on the podcast This American Life<\/em>, among other venues. In response, Daisey was publicly shamed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read about the Mike Daisey’s monologue scandal, how it unfolded, and what happened in its aftermath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In 2010, Mike Daisey wrote a monologue about Apple factory workers he\u2019d met in Shenzhen, China, and their terrible working conditions. <\/strong>In the monologue, Daisey spoke about n-hexane, an iPhone screen cleaner that evaporates faster than alcohol but is toxic. People he met who were exposed to n-hexane had such shaky hands that they couldn\u2019t pick up glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also spoke about a man whose hand had been crushed in a press and a worker who was only thirteen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2011, Ira Glass, the host of This American Life<\/em>, saw Daisey\u2019s show and asked him if he\u2019d like to tell the story on Glass\u2019s podcast. The podcast employees tried to fact check Daisey\u2019s narrative, but Mike Daisey told them his translator\u2019s phone number didn\u2019t work anymore. Since some of his other facts had been verified, they trusted him. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Daisey\u2019s performance inspired change: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rob Schmitz, Marketplace\u2019s <\/em>Shanghai correspondent, was suspicious of parts of Daisey\u2019s story. <\/strong>Mike Daisey said that he\u2019d interviewed workers in Starbucks, which Schmitz thought was unlikely because Starbucks is very expensive and most workers couldn\u2019t have afforded it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Schmitz tracked down Daisey\u2019s translator and discovered that many of the events described in the monologue were inaccurate or completely untrue. <\/strong>Daisey had only visited three plants, not ten as he\u2019d claimed. Some of the stories he\u2019d described were true, but he hadn\u2019t actually talked to the people involved\u2014n-hexane did make workers sick, but that had happened in a different town than the one Daisey had visited. Finally, some of the people he\u2019d described didn\u2019t exist, such as the man with the crushed hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 16, 2012, Glass invited Daisey back onto the podcast and asked him to explain. Daisey said that in a theatrical context, the truth means something different. He ended the conversation by saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d in a broken voice. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The interview was taped a week before it went live and that week was the most difficult for Daisey because the anticipation was terrifying. <\/strong>He thought and talked about killing himself, never performing again, and getting a divorce from his wife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just a few minutes after the interview went live, before the criticism had gotten momentum, Mike Daisey apologized on his website. The next day he was active on Twitter and responding to his would-be shamers, calling them hypocrites. Initially, his responses made them even angrier, but after some time, they realized he wasn\u2019t going to back down and lost interest. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What was Mike Daisey’s monologue about? What elements of the monologue were inaccurate or completely made up? And what was the public reaction to Daisey’s fiasco? In 2010, monologue writer and performer Mike Daisey committed literary fraud. He invented details in a non-fiction monologue about working conditions in Apple factories that he performed on the podcast This American Life, among other venues. In response, Daisey was publicly shamed. Read about the Mike Daisey’s monologue scandal, how it unfolded, and what happened in its aftermath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,33,24],"tags":[277],"class_list":["post-34202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-people","category-society","tag-so-youve-been-publicly-shamed","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nMike Daisey’s Embarassing Fiasco<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Immediate Aftermath<\/strong> <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n