On the premier episode of "The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert introduced the world to the word "truthiness." "We are a nation divided," Colbert said, "We're divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart." Truth, Colbert asserted, comes from a person's gut, not from a collection of facts. "I don't trust books," he said. "They're all fact and no heart."
Mike Daisey uses a lot of heart in his one-man show, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," which illustrates the dangerous and exploitative working conditions in Chinese factories which make Apple products. Unfortunately, Daisey's performance was presented as fact on the public radio show "This American Life." Ira Glass, the show's host, began last week's episode by saying, "Two months ago, we broadcast a story that we've come to believe is not true... This is Mike Daisey's story about visiting a plant in China where Apple manufactures iPhones and iPads and other products. He's been performing this story on-stage as a monologue since 2010... We excerpted the stage show that he's been telling in theaters around the country."
Most of what Daisey said about Apple and its supplier Foxconn was true, Glass said.
"But what's not true is what Mike said about his own trip to China," Glass said. "As best as we can tell, Mike's monologue in reality is a mix of things that actually happened when he visited China and things that he just heard about or researched, which he then pretends that he witnessed first hand. He pretends that he just stumbled upon an array of workers who typify all kinds of harsh things somebody might face in a factory that makes iPhones and iPads.
"And the most powerful and memorable moments in the story all seem to be fabricated."
Measured by the number of times it was downloaded from the "This American Life" website, it was the program's most popular episode.
It is easy to write this off as another example of sloppy journalism and the industry's deteriorating standards, but what some people might call poetic license is not exactly new to journalism. Columnists have long used fictional scenes and characters. Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Royko sometimes spoke through the fictional Slats Grobnik. When author Sherwood Anderson ran two newspapers in Southwest Virginia, he regularly wrote about and talked through a character called Buck Fever. Even earlier in the 20th century, Emma Bell Miles wrote columns in the voices of birds and other non-human animals gathered in a square in Chattanooga. The Library of Congress classification puts Miles' "Spirit of the Mountains," considered an important work on the folkways of Appalachia, in the "history of the Americas" section, but its characters are composites and fictions. Stetson Kennedy created quite a stir in 1954 when his book, "I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan," told how in infiltrated the hate group and revealed its crimes and sins. But much of the infiltrating was allegedly done by someone code named John Brown who reported to Kennedy.
So, are all those works fiction? Are they true? Are they journalism? What about Daisey's presentation?
Ira Glass took a clear stand on that. "We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio," Glass said on his show. "Many dedicated reporters and editors - our friends and colleagues - have worked for years to build the reputation for accuracy and integrity that the journalism on public radio enjoys. It's trusted by so many people for good reason. Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards."
That seems obvious, but those journalistic waters have been muddied for a very long time. In a world which includes Colbert and Jon Stewart, the turbidity is not likely to clear up any time soon.
The year after he introduced the world to "truthiness," Colbert coined "Wikiality."
Declaring himself no fan of reality, Colbert encouraged his fans to substitute their ideas and opinions for facts. "What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge," Colbert declared.
The majority can rule reality in spite of facts and reality because, "If you go against what the majority of people perceive to be reality, you're the one who's crazy."
"This American Life" got snookered. It trusted Daisey too much and verified too little. When that became apparent, the program went further than most media outlets to correct the error, devoting an entire program to what happened and what the situation Daisey lied about is really like. Then again, the program's error was larger than most of those which get corrected with a paragraph or two inside most newspapers.
Daisey lied - he might call it poetic license - to get at what he perceived as truth. It is sort of like taking a mud bath to get clean.
Tim Thornton is the ombudsman of The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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