We humans like to invent fake facts!

SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 2012

Although we have other names for it: We’ll recommend this news report in this morning’s Washington Post.

It concerns a big pile of fake facts.

Uh-oh! An NPR show is “retracting” a 39-minute report. Paul Farhi explains why:

FARHI (3/17/12): An acclaimed radio documentary about brutal work conditions in the Chinese factories that make Apple’s products contained “numerous fabrications” and included invented characters and incidents, the producers of the program acknowledged Friday.

“This American Life,” a popular public-radio program, said it was “retracting” its January broadcast of a 39-minute piece by Mike Daisey that detailed life inside the Chinese plants that make iPhones and iPads.

Daisey has defended his work; it’s OK because he’s an artist! Unfortunately, Farhi mentions the following:

FARHI: But Daisey was more defiant on his blog. “I stand by my work,” he wrote. “My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.” He added, “What I do is not journalism.”

However, since the debut of his theatrical monologue, Daisey has given numerous interviews in which he presented his work as a firsthand factual account, Schmitz said. “He allows journalists to treat him like a journalist,” he said via phone from Shanghai. “He clearly states [in interviews] that these are things that he saw and experienced.”

It’s OK when Daisey says thing which aren’t true. For one thing, he’s a sensitive artist. Plus, he has God on his side!

Similarly with Gail Collins, though her readers pimp the excuse that she’s just being humorous. That has always been Rush Limbaugh’s excuse, of course.

It’s OK to say these things! A greater truth is being expressed! That’s what the chimps all told themselves when they lied for two year about Gore.

We believed those stupid tales too! After all, we saw some of our favorites repeat them! We human beings are very credulous, even in our brilliant tribe.