Think Lawsuit? (Image via Wikipedia)
Mike Daisey’s lies about Foxconn’s Chinese factories emerged because Rob Schmitz, a Public Radio reporter based in China, thought Daisey’s account sounded fishy and investigated for himself. Since Schmitz’s account—based mostly on discussions with Daisey’s interpreter—and This American Life’s retraction of an episode contaning an abridged version of Daisey’s monologue on the subject, several other China-based Westerners have expressed that they, too, had thought Daisey’s story sounded fishy.
If many western reporters thought Daisey was making things up, and Schmitz was able to prove it, doesn’t it follow that Apple must have known all along that Daisey was lying? For example, Apple should have known that there were no hexane-related injuries at any of Foxconn’s Shenzhen facilities, contrary to Daisey’s claim to have met injured workers there whose “hands shake uncontrollably.” Given the knowledge that Daisey was damaging their brand with lies, why hasn’t Apple sued him for slander?
I suppose the answer is that Apple felt a slander suit would not serve its interests. Litigating Daisey’s monologue would have brought out the same revelations we’ve seen this week—some of its content is true, some is made up, and some describes real events that Daisey heard about but did not witness. Such a mixed bag of findings would not have quieted objections to Apple’s business practices in China, and would have raised the profile of the complaints.
Unfortunately, this calculus reflects the fact that the public is likely to mis-analyze the merits of Apple’s operations in China. There is a temptation to say that many of Daisey’s lies were inconsequential: whether in Shenzhen or Suzhou, there were Foxconn workers who suffered hexane poisioning. (Correction: the Suzhou incident involved Wintek, another Apple contractor, not Foxconn.) This is essentially Daisey’s defense—that he took real stories and made them more vivid by telling them as though he had seen them in person.
But a key reason Daisey’s account was effective is that it depicted a density of horror at Foxconn’s Chinese plants. If Daisey could visit just one city for just six days and come out with as much vivid material as he did, imagine what is going on at Foxconn’s facilities all over the country. Admitting that many of the conditions he discussed were not uniform and not necessarily common—and not, so far as he could tell, present in Shenzhen—would have made his critique much less damning.
A lot of the anger at Daisey over the last couple of days has focused on how he has wronged the listeners who believed his story and the outlets that agreed to broadcast it, and those groups certainly should feel wronged. But we’re almost glossing over Daisey’s primary victims: Apple and Foxconn, the companies he has been maliciously lying about, and their shareholders. Slander is still wrong even when the entity you’re lying about is a huge and wildly successful company, and it’s not wrong principally because you might embarrass the network that broadcasts your slander.
I think a slander suit against Daisey has probably gotten even less likely after this week’s revelations. Daisey can’t have much money to pay damages with, and the other valid reason to sue for slander—to get someone to stop lying about you—is now moot. But I think that’s sort of a shame, as I would enjoy watching Daisey defend a slander suit.
As for the merits of Foxconn’s operations in China, I think Matt Yglesias has the right take. You have to look at this from an opportunity cost perspective. If the conditions at Foxconn plants are bad in various ways, and yet Chinese people are lining up out the door for jobs there, what that tells you is that their other options are worse. China, like many countries, is much poorer than the United States, and so many things that are improvements by Chinese standards will look terrible from our perspective.
The best way to narrow that gap is continued industrialization and economic development in China—a process that is hindered if we shame people out of buying Chinese products. Meanwhile, Americans should concern themselves with the plight of poor people around the world, but not especially with the plight of poor people around the world who happen to make products for the U.S. market.
