Glass, Apple, Daisey

In a recent blog post, I said that Ira Glass could, “learn from Mike Daisey when it comes to telling a story that inspires people to take responsibility.”

I wrote that post right after hearing the ‘This American Life’ broadcast of Mike Daisey being raked over the coals by Ira Glass.

To clarify, Mike Daisey’s show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs managed to get a lethargic and ignorant (not-knowing about Foxconn conditions) audience to suddenly care about where our favorite electronic Apple gizmo come from.

What really bothered me was Ira Glass’ framing of how Daisey was a manipulative liar. By broadcasting the interrogation of Daisey, Glass modeled the way the public should react. It is my feeling that Glass vilified Daisey to cover up his own mistake—which was to broadcast Daisey’s monologue without doing his due diligence.

Was the Daisey episode the first time ‘This American Life’ broadcast a story without fact checking? Perhaps, perhaps not. But people who heard the broadcast completely skipped over Glass’s mistake to instead go directly for Daisey’s jugular. Daisey is now a symbol of all that’s bad in the media and Glass is a truth slayer. 

What made Daisey such an easy target is that he admitted that he lied. Daisey manipulated us purposefully whereas TAL manipulated us accidentally. Glass admitted that he, “should have killed the story,” but he didn’t broadcast a recording of his boss ripping him a new one. Glass was the guy with the power. He was the one with whom we wanted to align ourselves. A lie is obvious and an omission isn’t.

Then ‘This American Life’ spoke to Daisey’s translator. But I don’t expect that Daisey’s translator is going to say anything that makes China look bad. Consider that China is the country where artist Ai Weiwei‘s wife will go to jail if he doesn’t cough up a few million dollars in taxes—because he speaks out against the communist government.

We live in a world where Rush Limbaugh still has a successful career after labeling women ‘sluts’ for using birth control, so it’s probable that Daisey and Glass will both survive and thrive.

The whole situation reminded me of the Yes Men (powerful white men arguing over responsibility and ethics while a group of people in another country suffer oppression).

I still don’t understand how Ira Glass didn’t know if he should feel bad about workers who are coerced into standing on an assembly line 60+ hours a week. Which brings me to my point.

I don’t trust anything anyone says anymore.

How Ira Glass Royally Screwed Mike Daisey

When it comes to telling a story that inspires people to take responsibility, Ira Glass could learn a lesson or two from Mike Daisey.

I saw Mike Daisey’s The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (about Apple’s factory working conditions in China) at the 2010 Time Based Art Festival here in Portland, Oregon. As a result of his emotionally powerful storytelling, I have yet to buy an iPhone.

Recently Mike Daisey performed some of his monologue on the This American Life radio show. Then, ‘This American Life’ retracted the Mike Daisey episode because they found out after the fact that Daisey’s storytelling was not up to their “journalistic standards.”

This American Life then had Daisey back on the show to berate him and discredit him for their mistake! It’s not Daisey’s responsibility to tell Glass that his story shouldn’t be on This American Life. It’s Ira Glass’s responsibility as a journalist to properly fact check before he brings a theater professional on his show and calls it journalism. This American Life failed to do their due diligence and they’re covering their own asses by portraying Mike Daisey as a liar.

Who now gets to bring Ira Glass on the air for an hour to publicly ask him, “What were you thinking? Do you just put people on the air without fact checking first? How many other half-truths have you broadcast? Are you worried that Apple might sue you?”

It’s not wrong for a theater performer to take facts or fiction and weave them into a monologue. Mike Daisey’s live show is powerful. He gets the audience to realize and to care that it’s our money driving the slave labor in China. Meanwhile, after hearing confirmation about factory explosions and employees being forced to work two 12-hour shifts in a row, Ira Glass asked, “Should I feel bad?”

Second European Narrative Therapy Conference 2012

Second European Narrative Therapy Conference 2012
hosted by Narrativ Praksis
August the 15th-17th, 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark

The title of the 2012 conference is Narrative Therapy and Community Work: Narrative Practice - What’s going on?

Keynote speakers include Maggie Carey, Art Fisher, Johnella Bird, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad and more to come.

Following in the tradition of the Inaugural European Conference in Brighton, England in 2009, the conference aims to highlight the multiple dimensions of narrative inquiry in a friendly and collegial environment. The conference is being organized around three tracks: Narratives of the Body, Narrativity in Organisations and StoryMaking and we anticipate that this will contribute to a lively and relevant experience for all participants.

The deadline for submission of proposals is the 1st of March 2012.

Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work. Send your proposal to us at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Feel free to check http://narrativeconference.dk in the coming weeks for more information concerning the conference.

Should you have any questions regarding the Call for Papers, or the conference as a whole, please email us at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Norma Cameron: Cultivating Narrative Intelligence

In this TEDxVictoria video, Norma Cameron looks at the evolution of story. As we evolve into a global community, the skills of a storyteller—cultivating imagination, embracing listening and exercising perceptual agility—are needed more than ever before!

Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory

In this TED talk, Mr. Kahneman explains how the remembering self (storyteller) dominates the memory of the experiencing self. Our future is made up of anticipated memories. My favorite part is when he asks about what kind of vacation you’d choose to take if you knew you were not going to remember the vacation. Would you still go?