The Rise and Risks of Intimate Audio Journalism
Via Literary Hub
The Story
Ira Glass built This American Life on narrative plot and character driven storytelling that turns complex issues into intimate audio journalism, an approach that earned the first Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting with the 2019 episode The Out Crowd about the Remain in Mexico asylum policy.
That same emotional method exposed the show to risk when its 2012 episode Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory became its most downloaded program, featuring monologist Mike Daisey describing child laborers and chemical poisoning inside Foxconn factories in China.
Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz, based in Shanghai, tracked down Daisey's interpreter and found that many of the most dramatic claims were fabricated.
Glass devoted a full episode called Retraction in March 2012 to apologizing and dismantling the falsehoods, admitting he had failed to independently verify the interpreter's account.
In the aftermath the show hired professional fact checkers and phased out the personal monologue segments that had long been a signature.
The story shows that the same storytelling techniques that make journalism feel human also demand rigorous verification to stay trustworthy.
That same emotional method exposed the show to risk when its 2012 episode Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory became its most downloaded program, featuring monologist Mike Daisey describing child laborers and chemical poisoning inside Foxconn factories in China.
Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz, based in Shanghai, tracked down Daisey's interpreter and found that many of the most dramatic claims were fabricated.
Glass devoted a full episode called Retraction in March 2012 to apologizing and dismantling the falsehoods, admitting he had failed to independently verify the interpreter's account.
In the aftermath the show hired professional fact checkers and phased out the personal monologue segments that had long been a signature.
The story shows that the same storytelling techniques that make journalism feel human also demand rigorous verification to stay trustworthy.
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Read the original reporting at Literary Hub.
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