早前，就有频繁爆出中国深圳富士康数名员工接连跳楼的骇人事件，使得媒体和大众不得不对这一家知名大型企业的“血汗工厂”工作环境提出深深的质疑——毕竟它是专为苹果提供代工服务的中国公司，高新科技的iPad及其他所有的苹果产品都在这里生产。当前，这个问题再一次被媒体放在聚光灯前。
一条名为“This American Life”（暂译为《美国生活》）的小短片在美国广为流传开来，在苹果的iTunes商店播客里浏览播出量相当之高，该短片是由“The American Life”节目组对苹果在中国的代工厂进行了实地考察然后创作的，广播中称富士康的用工环境没有达到要求，并存在健康安全隐患，富士康在国外的信誉造成了严重影响。同时给苹果公司造成了巨大的压力，苹果表示将对所有设在中国的代工厂尤其是富士康加强巡查工作。播出之后，反响强烈。
这条短片已经打破了“下载最多”的记录，但是目前被指出《美国生活》（This American Life）工作人员Mike Daisey在节目中表现的富士康“血汗工厂”之内幕和情节有夸大捏造之成分。Mike Daisey随后坦承，有些指控的确是根据“剧情需要”所添加的，以及他说他在富士康遇见年仅16岁的员工，也只是他的揣测。对此，《美国生活》（This American Life）主持人兼执行制片人Ira Glass强调，“这是我们的错误。”他再也无法确保Mike Daisey所言的真实性，他决定撤回揭露富士康“血汗工厂”内幕的单元。
Daisey的谎言及《纽约时报》于1月份刊出的一系列调查报道，造成线上线下的对抗声音越来越多，大有火上浇油之势。Change.org上的一份“保护中国工厂生产制造iPhone工人权益”的请愿书，已有25万签名。
但是，Daisey发表过的一些言论，以及CNN上Zain Verjee反复重复的那些细节，而后被Daisey的中文翻译人员逐一撤回，那些事件包括：
•Daisey表示，自己采访过被正乙炔伤害的工人。而苹果方面也承认，乙炔伤害确有其事，但是并非发生在富士康。
•发现雇有12岁的童工。翻译人员公开表示，他们并未采访过未成年的童工人员，尽管有些工人确实看起来很年幼。苹果公司2010年供应商责任报告显示，在不同的10个供应商中查出共91名未成年非法雇佣童工。
•该该短片堪称最戏剧部分之一的片段，是Daisey说他采访过一名因过度劳累而致残疾的工人，原本工作实际上是生产iPad的机壳。戴西向这名工人展示了iPad，他表示从未见过这一产品。在玩iPad的过程中，这名工人称iPad是一个“魔术”。翻译人员辩解，这从未发生过。
富士康的工作环境问题遭遇爆料早已不是新鲜事。这家同样为索尼（Sony）、微软（Microsoft）、诺基亚（Nokia），以及其他一些国产品牌代工生产的电子产品供应商，自2010年起就被CNN等知名媒体报道，中国工厂不断有员工自杀事件发生。Daisey向公众表示，他见富士康恶劣事件的影响逐渐淡化在公众视野，于是想到编写一个表达该主题的故事，使全球公民都能了解著名电子产品的跨国工厂工作环境。
“我所做的一切努力都是为了让人们真正的关心他们。我不想说我没有寻找捷径达到目标，但我做的一切都是为了工作。”Daisey说道。“是我的错，使我真正感到悔恨的错误是，我的报道被当作一篇新闻稿刊登，而它事实上并不是新闻稿。他它只是一出戏剧。我只不过是以戏剧和回忆录的表现形式而创作出的戏剧。”
也有人说，他在数十个媒体采访中不断的提出戏剧和新闻媒体报道之间的界限。“而最终的结果是，Mike Daisey的一切努力并未使他自圆其说，反而让事情变得更加一团浑水。也许是因为，他的这一行动使得他原本以为帮助的群体更受折磨。”
“过去三、四个月里，与Mike Daisey有过接触的人，都被深深的污染了。他们应该好好的重新反省一下，检查自己做了什么事情。”Hesseldahl这样对CNN的记者Howard Kurtz说道。
美国公众电台的《市场》节目主持人Kai Ryssdal,说，Daisey将事实和故事混为一团。“Mike Daisey是一名很棒的故事家，没错，但如果有人将你作为故事的人物，并在互联网上掀起轩然大波，你能无动于衷的‘先想想’再看吗？”他对CNN这样讲到。
“当然，Mike Daisey的故事也有真实的部分——在苹果，确实有非法雇用未成年童工的情况存在（供应商内部）；也确实有发生过工人乙炔中毒事件，”他说。“但底线是，Mike Daisey讲述了一个精彩的故事，而人们也随之停止了怀疑。”
A story that helped catapult the issue of poor work conditions for Chinese workers at Foxconn -- a primary maker of iPads and other devices for Apple Inc. -- back into the spotlight in January has unraveled.
An episode of "This American Life," a wildly popular U.S. radio show distributed by Public Radio International that is regularly the most downloaded podcast on Apple's iTunes store, broadcast an hour-long radio version of monologist Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," in which he details a 2010 trip he took to meet workers at Foxconn in Shenzhen, China.
That episode -- which broke records as the most downloaded show of "This American Life" -- has now been retracted for numerous fabrications, many of which were repeated by Daisey in subsequent interviews, including one with CNN International.
The power of Daisey's storytelling, coupled with a New York Times investigative series of stories in January, fanned the flames that launched a number of off-and-online protests, including a petition on Change.org that seeks to "protect workers making iPhones in Chinese factories" that has nearly 250,000 signatures.
CNNMoney: Apple and the Daisey affair
But several of Daisey's dramatic claims, some of which he repeated to CNN's Zain Verjee, have been retracted after Daisey's Chinese translator was found by a reporter from "Marketplace," distributed by American Public Media, and disputed his version of events, including
Reporter: Daisey story didn't ring true
Playwright targets Apple * Meeting workers with shaking hands that were poisoned by the chemical n-hexane. Apple itself acknowledged there were incidents with the chemical at two plants, but not at Foxconn.
* Found workers who were as young as 12 years old. The translator told public radio they interviewed no underage workers, although some may have looked young. Apple's 2010 audit found 10 suppliers who hired 91 underage employees out of hundreds of thousands of employees.
* In one of the show's most dramatic moments, Daisey said he interviewed a former worker now handicapped from repetitive stress injuries seeing an iPad for the first time, describing it as "a kind of magic." The translator said that never happened.
Questions raised about work conditions at Foxconn are nothing new. The electronics supplier -- who also makes electronic goods for Sony, Microsoft, Nokia and other household brands -- came under intense scrutiny by CNN and other media outlets in 2010 after a series of suicides at its Chinese plants. Daisey told public radio that after seeing the news story slip away from public attention, he wanted to create a story that would help sustain interest in the work conditions for overseas makers of popular electronics goods.
"And everything I have done in making this monologue for the theater has been toward that end -- to make people care. I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard. But I stand behind the work," Daisey said. "My mistake, the mistake that I truly regret is that I had it on your show as journalism and it's not journalism. It's theater. I use the tools of theater and memoir to achieve its dramatic arc."
But purporting as truth the fabrications of his show in dozens of media interviews has raised a number of questions about the line between drama and journalism. "The net result of Mike Daisey's efforts to put self-promotion ahead of the facts has badly muddied the waters, and has probably done more harm to the people he sought to help," wrote Arik Hesseldahl, senior editor for All Things D.
"Everybody who has touched Mike Daisey in the past three to four months has been tainted and they need to go back and re-examine their archives," Hesseldahl told CNN's Howard Kurtz.
Kai Ryssdal, host of "Marketplace," which broke the story, said Daisey's account mixed fact and fiction. "Mike Daisey is a great, great story teller and when you have a guy who spins a web like that and gets you involved, it's really difficult to take it apart and say, wait a minute, let's think about this for a second ... what doesn't work here?" he told CNN.
"Also, there are parts of Mike Daisey's story that are true -- it does happen that Apple has had underage workers (at its suppliers); it does happen that people have n-hexane poisoning and all that," he said. "But the bottomline is Mike Daisey tells a great story and people suspended their disbelief."
