Truthiness: <i>This American Life</i> and the Monologist
This case provides insight into how a news organization copes when it gets a story wrong, whether by its own actions or those of others. On January 6, 2012, the public radio documentary program This American Life broadcast an episode featuring Mike Daisey, whose Broadway stage show exposed deplorable working conditions at an Apple computer supplier in China. TAL host Ira Glass and his production team are appalled to learn that crucial details of Daisey’s story were conflated or invented. TAL has to decide how to notify its public about the errors, how to manage audience and press reaction, and how to restore credibility to the show.
Case number:
CSJ-12-0046.0
Category:
Journalism Cases
Topics:
journalism ethics, editorial management, broadcast journalism, crisis management
Teaching resources:
Epilogue,
Teaching note