"Daisey's provocations probably will help improve working conditions, but the methods are still unacceptable." (Image by Steve Jurvetson.)

More major fallout from the Mike Daisey-This American Life collaboration, in which the NPR show presented a large segment from his theater piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which decries the horrid working conditions at the Foxconn tech-manufacturing complex in China. Ira Glass and company have retracted the story, saying that Daisey’s reportage doesn’t check out, and the monologist himself has acknowledged that he misrepresented interviews. Daisey has defended misleading people, saying his only mistake was in allowing a theater piece to be broadcast as journalism. But the problems run deeper than that. When someone presents an unadorned monologue, gives no hint of artifice, and poses as a reporter who’s done leg work and interviews, expectations of veracity, even in a theater setting, are different.

The upshot is that there are major problems at Foxconn factories and Daisey’s provocations probably will help improve working conditions, but the methods are still unacceptable. Daisey is a major talent, but he can’t just play reporter and then walk away from it when the label becomes inconvenient. He needs to rethink his process.•