An interesting thing happened on Friday. Of course, to my managing editor and editor-in-chief, it was a face-palm-worthy thing. For me, it was interesting, because it called to question the nature of full disclosure statements.
Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which I blogged about as an example of provocative, on-the-ball, anxiety-inducing work, turned out to be partially fabricated. Consequently, "This American Life," which had aired a portion of the monologue and posited it as truth, aired a retraction episode to clear up the, what we journalists call, "factual errors."
Understandably, the Internet blew up, especially the theater people on Twitter.
Terry Teachout of Washington Post called it "unforgiveable." Issac Butler told everyone via Twitter to chill out until TAL aired the retraction episode.
And even Roger Ebert called that Mr. Daisey is a "fraudster." That made me sad because it simplifies the issue.
