Art Colby Culture In The 'Cac

“This American Life” Calls out ‘Cac Grad

A couple of months back, a monologue entitled “The Agony and Ectasy of Steve Jobs”  aired on “This American Life.” It’s the story of one man’s journey through the Apple supply-chain in China and the human rights injustices there. It was far and away the most popular “This American Life” ever aired. The critically-acclaimed play was written by a graduate of the NESCAC. His name is Mike Daisey and he is a Colby College graduate, Class of 1996.

In the latest “This American Life,” Ira Glass came on the air to announce that the Mike Daisey episode constituted a violation of the program’s journalistic standards. As Glass puts it, the story was a web of lies.

I suggest you give the latest episode a listen. It features an extensive fact-finding mission from the NPR China Correspondent who first sniffed the story’s fabrication and then sought out Daisey’s Chinese translator, as well as a painful interrogation of Daisey by Ira Glass himself. It’s some of the most compelling journalism about journalism I’ve ever heard.

If you’d like to hear far more of Mike Daisey’s side of the story than “This American Life” presents, check out his blog.

http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/