Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
Was it journalism, performance art, political provocation, or just a
hell of a good story? Was it a great truth, a great lie, or somewhere in
between?
This American Life’s retraction (good NPR explainer here)
of Mike Daisey’s January piece on Apple’s factories in China has
unleashed a cascade of reaction and rethinking. It’s been a chain
reaction, with the episode connecting up all our next-era hopes and
fears.
The much-decorated (Peabody, Polk, DuPont-Columbia, Murrow awards) This American Life is 16 years old now, and fundamentally a radio program. But the “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” show showed real new-media power, becoming TAL’s most downloaded podcast
ever at 880,000 downloads — a sure measure of its virality. (In that
follow-on impact, it reminds us of the power of Katie Couric’s 2008
interview with Sarah Palin — an interview whose web afterlife made many
more waves than the initial broadcast.)
Why are we seeing such a fuss? The two big reasons, I believe: the impact the story had, and our increasingly uneasy footing in the blurring media landscape.
The 39-minute Daisey piece did what dozens of previous stories on
Foxconn’s massive manufacturing of our Apple (and other) wonders hadn’t
accomplished: It captured listeners’ imaginations.
Why? Daisey turned our portable pleasures to guilty ones. Talking
with Chinese workers, he connected our pleasures to their pain — 18-hour
days, chemical poisonings, suicides, and more. He tempered the guilt
with a decent pro and con discussion of how even odious sweatshop jobs
have long lifted generations into the bottom rungs of middle class
existences in many nations.
TAL pricked the consciences of 1.8 million
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/the-newsonomics-of-mr-daiseys-media-blur/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5c1b7d03e3-DAILY_EMAIL
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