Stories aren’t made out of facts. Storytellers use facts to reveal truth but they use a lot of other things too. And if ever I have to choose between facts and truth, I’ll take truth. 

Wait. What? Truth! Exactly! And yet, what Daisey peddled was not truth. He purported to have seen things he did not. He made out that he had interviewed people he had not. He exaggerated the number of people he spoke to, he made up facts to suit his narrative and he included details of which he had no first-hand knowledge. He peddled untruths, even if they were based on facts. That there can be confusion about the ramifications of this is a deep problem that to me suggests no less than that the fundamentals of our society are deeply broken.

Daisey’s defense on This American Life is that these tropes are the tricks of theater and his only mistake was to play the excerpt from his show on a radio news show, a journalistic endeavor. This is somewhat valid. I admit I had heard of the theater show, and assumed that it was somewhat fictionalized. And, equally, I assumed the This American Life episode was a special fact-checked version for public radio, particularly given the care with which the episode was presented.

Yet I deeply worry about our wider inability to understand that stories and journalism are intricately related–and that we all have a responsibility to ensure we do not fabricate in the name of truth-telling, even with the best of intentions, or, seriously, without clarity of context. Journalism, as I know first hand, is incredibly hard work, made easier by the temptation to cut corners, tell neater stories or tie up awkward loose ends. Yet the best in the business describe the complexity of life and society without resorting to any of these tactics. The best storytellers in the business do the same. 

I studied Latin at university, an irrelevant aside, but for a question one interviewer asked me when I was applying for college: “Why does history matter?” “It matters because it helps us to understand our world, our background, how and why we got where we are,” I replied, naively. “Something that is real simply is more resonant.” As I say, not very deep. But if our contemporary writers are producing fiction in the name of journalism, we have a problem–and so does our future society. I also wonder how this might end… Daisey seems to think it’s fine to hype his story in order to get attention from the world for a story about which he is passionate. What next? We already criticize sensationalism in society and our media. What we need is thinking, analysis, intelligence, smarts. Let’s not fight fire with fire. We need companies like Apple to engage with these issues in an authentic way; not because they have been bullied or cheated into addressing untruths. Let’s treat our world’s citizens as adults and engage them in a thoughtful, considered way that does not resort to “truthiness” or lies. Evan Osnos in The New Yorker writes a beautiful piece that highlights the west’s willingness to believe terrible stories about a culture of which we are both fearful and unsure. We need to think more deeply about all of this.

I’m so incredibly depressed by this story. It made me question journalism at the time; wondering why professionals had not been able to get this story, and wondering why a non-expert had scooped everyone through such seemingly straightforward means. Is the industry so in dire straits that we cannot report on the critical? Are we so far from being engaged with fellow humanity on the other side of the world?

There is no such thing as pure objectivity in writing, even in journalism. But we should support those who strive to report both the facts and the truth every day. For now, I’ll continue to reel at this whole sorry affair (and also now question whether interpreter Cathy was indeed set up to counter the story by the Chinese government, as has been suggested.) For anyone not familiar with the lengthy process of traditional fact-checking, see also the wonderful book, The Lifespan of a Fact, which feels particularly pertinent round about now.

The retraction episode plays a quote from Mike Daisey, speaking to his interpreter. She asks if he’s really going to bluff his way into the factories to find out what’s going on. “I say yes, Cathy,” is Daisey’s response. “I’m going to lie to lots of people.” What a terrible, terrible shame.