I just wanted to write quickly about the Retraction story to perhaps inform how this story has affected me as a listener and, if at all possible, contribute to the self-reflection I am guessing your team has done since the un-truths of Mike Daisy’s story have come to your attention. Before I begin, I should say that I am not a journalist, so I am not sure what standards are involved in journalism, and that I fully support This American Life’s attempt to apply journalistic standards to the show. That beging said, I was struck by a few things in the show that were slightly annoying to me, and others that worry me about the impact this experience might have on future shows.

First, I do not perceive This American Life as a journalistic show. What I mean by that is that I listen to a lot of other radio shows that exist on public radio to discuss journalism, and This American Life is not one of them. What I expect from This American Life is good (and true) stories about life and people’s funny, sad, awkward, difficult, and sometimes unbelievable experiences, because I think that is what you do best. While I do enjoy the more obvious journalistic pieces (many episodes done with the Planet Money Team come to mind), and that I do expect these stories to be factually true, I think I am more interested in the stories where people discuss interpersonal experiences they have had and how these experiences affected them. I do expect all your stories to be true, (and I know how much other shows, like the Moth for example, emphasize that their stories are true), but I also feel that either the individuals telling these stories, and quite often This American Life staff, give a “spin” to the story by focusing on a particular aspect that makes the story more entertaining in some way. I think that is just part of good story-telling, but maybe I am wrong. So I guess that what I find annoying here is both that Mr. Daisy portrayed this story to be factually true by journalistic standards when we all thought it was (because we expect all your stories to be true), and that by doing this Retraction show, you emphasize the truth aspect of your stories when the truth is not really the focus point of most of your stories, and that I find that once in a while you ask very leading questions or clips for the purpose of making a show as opposed to “gathering facts.” A glaring example of this is the clip you play of Mr. Daisy saying “ And I say, yes Cathy, I’m going to lie to lots of people.” There is no neutral goal in playing this clip other then demonstrating the irony of the situation, and perhaps a slightly passive-aggressive way of taking revenge on Mr. Daisy. This clip is true, but is included to have a large emotional impact, not just to report on the facts in a neutral way. This American Life is evidently very biased in reporting their version of this story, and has lots to gain in portraying Mr. Daisy negatively, perhaps rightly so, but this clip de-emphasizes what I consider the journalistic nature of the show and emphasizes its emotional nature. Perhaps I am confusing journalism with neutral, unbiased fact reporting here,  but I don’t think a journalist who tries to portray the facts neutrally ends that act with that segment.

Another example from this show is Ira’s question to Mr. Daisy: “Right but you’re saying that the only way you can get through emotionally to people is to mess around with the facts, but that isn’t so.” When did he say this? Perhaps it was edited out, but I never heard Mr. Daisy implying this in the show. So why did Ira ask this? Maybe he thought that is what Mr. Daisy thought, or maybe he was trying to get Mr. Daisy to say something he didn’t mean. I think a better, much more neutral question would have been: “Do you think that you could have gotten through emotionally to people using only the journalistic truth?” So I think leading questions occur way too often on your show for you to emphasize the importance of journalism to the show.

To end that point, what I would ask you, the This American Life team, is: If want you wanted is the facts, why didn’t you just interview the NY TImes journalist in the first place? I think that if you answer that question, then you have to acknowledge the “theater” piece, as Mr. Daisy might call it, of the This American Life show that Mr. Daisy’s approach fulfilled and which you were attached to as opposed to another journalist’s perhaps more bland reporting.

My point refers to how acts 1 and 2 contrasted with the NY Times journalist, Mr. Duhigg, who said “So it’s not my job to tell you whether you should feel bad or not, right? I’m a reporter for the New York Times, my job is to find facts and essentially let you make a decision on your own.” Perhaps I am too much of a constructivist, but even though Mr. Duhigg aims to present facts, his articles are not just a presentation of facts. They are facts that are presented in a certain way to help the reader process the facts using a story, and this may cause certain emotions in the reader even though Mr. Duhigg sees it as “facts.” This point is well exemplified by Ira’s comment: “Well, now like, when you say it like that, suddenly I feel bad again” in response to “So should you feel bad that someone is working 12 to 24 hours a day in order to produce the iPhone that you’re carrying in your pocket—-“. It was established earlier in the interview that these 12 to 24 shifts occur sometimes, such that “More than half of the workers whose records are examined are working more than 60 hours per week.” So why is the 12 to 24 hour reference made here? Assuming not all factory workers work 12 to 24 hours per day, and we know some portion, probably close to 40%, work less than 60hr weeks, he could as easily have said: “So should you feel bad that someone is working 8 to 12 hours a day and some others 12 to 24 hours in order to produce the iPhone that you’re carrying in your pocket—-“. But he didn’t, which is perhaps why Ira responded in the way he did. I guess what I am saying is that you cannot make an entirely factual show without the information being perceived in an emotional way, and YOU DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT, because the emotional impact your show has is what people respond to and make this show so popular with people like me! That being said, I entirely support your attempts to do so in a way that is factually true by journalistic standards. I just think the issue of truth is less likely to occur when shows are about someone’s personal experience as opposed to a commentary on the wealthiest company in the world. So I think what I am saying is that this might have happened before in stories with individuals telling personal stories where fact checking was very difficult, and that you should not feel bad that it happened then because, well, you can’t control what people tell you that you can’t fact check. In other words, don’t try to be something you are not (a journalism show) and embrace the subjectivity that makes your show what it is: a really great show about how people experience and view things, not “the facts”.

Lastly, this show was sponsored by reputation.com! That’s weird and a little funny, but mostly weird, because of the way in which this story might affect both Mr. Daisy’s and This American LIfe’s reputation. That’s all.

I hope this email finds you well, and that you may perhaps find the time to respond (but it’s ok if you don’t).

An avid listener of This American Life in the past 4 years, and I hope for many more years to come.