I believe Mike Daisey was unethical in his description of what transpired with the Apple factories in China but I don’t consider him a liar but a great raconteur. I believe he stretched the truth to make it sound more compelling to the audience. As journalist, one should be desire to report the facts at all times; however, as an artist you are able to unfold the “story” as you see fit.
On another note, American companies are outsourcing its labor and products to China to cut cost and have a larger profit margin. If individuals believe Apple should provide their customers with “guilt free” products, we probably should begin to reevaluate other manufacturers that we currently patronized. What does ” guilt free” really mean?
This dialogue is not the first one to surface about how bad factory employees in China are being treated and frankly I don’t think it will be the last. These thinks have occurred and we can honestly say that because it is not happening here (as far as we know) then it is their problem for as long as we can make a profit.
Can we consider this a social responsibility for us as consumers to not tolerate this type of conduct?
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 
I completely agree with your statement “his dialogue is not the first one to surface about how bad factory employees in China are being treated and frankly I don’t think it will be the last”. Where there’s controversy, there’s a story. Daisey sought out to make us as Apple consumers feel something from his story, even if it was a “tall tale”. But did the end justify the means? He did make people care and feel something his monologue.
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I think you took an interesting approach to this: looking past Mike Daisey’s controversy and to the actual story behind it. It’s true that many Chinese factories are horrible working conditions for employees, but is that America’s problem? The reason we outsource is so that people in our own country are not treated that way, and to me, that is enough reason for people to “forget” how their products are actually made. The point you raise is definitely controversial because I’m sure no body wants to see other people treated so poorly, but would any one be willing to give up their iPhones…
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I do consider Daisey a liar, because he tried to pass off his story as journalism instead of art, which he later claimed after he was caught. If he had just come out and said his story was art instead of journalism at the very beginning, I would not have been upset at Daisey, but the fact that he tried to pass it off as truth, until he got caught, bothered me.
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Cool. I had to look up raconteur. I love to be challenged! Good word!
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We can consider it a problem of consumer awareness. However, I also think consumers are weakly organized and very atomized (each in her or his own world) to be able to coordinate in such a way as to pressure firms.
It is hard to look at the outsourcing of production from the USA to ANYWHERE and not ask how it is that laws and international treaties were structured so as to enable the “race to the bottom” where countries compete to hollow out their own worker protections. Back to my above point, individuals often hope that government can more effectively pressure firms then atomized consumers.
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