Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

On the day that Apple begins retail sales of its new iPad, we learned that a major public radio piece about Apple was not what it purported to be.

The week of January 8, KUSP broadcast an episode of This American Life titled “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.” The program was an adaptation of Mike Daisey’s one-man show, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In the stage show and the radio program, Mike Daisey takes Apple and a major contractor, Foxconn, to task for their labor practices in China.

The TAL episode took off – becoming the most downloaded program in the series’ history, and it brought even more attention to the already accelerating news coverage of Apple contractor business practices in China.

Among the listeners to the radio show was Rob Schmitz, China correspondent for another of our programs, Marketplace. As a reporter based in China, Schmitz has first-hand knowledge of Apple’s operations, and had doubts about some of the specifics in the radio program.

Ultimately, Marketplace and TAL joined forces to better understand what parts of Mike Daisey’s account were verifiable, and what wasn’t. As it turned out, many important details in the story didn’t stand up.

Consequently, TAL has decided to retract the original story in its entirety. Here is Ira Glass’ blog post about the situation.

A segment of tonight’s Marketplace (3:00 and 5:30 PM on KUSP) will report on the story, and next week’s broadcast of This American Life (Sunday 11:00 AM, repeating next Friday at 7:00 PM) will also cover the situation. That program will include an segment with Rob Schmitz; Ira will also be interviewing Mike Daisey.

TAL has always used both straight reporting and fiction to tell their stories, but with bright lines around each. It’s to their credit that they have moved strongly to set the record straight in this situation, and I am eagerly awaiting the upcoming broadcast…

During today’s 5:30 PM broadcast of Marketplace, KUSP switched back to our main on-air studio for the first time after renovating the studio — completing our Upgrade 2011 project.

Just after we started the program, Chief Engineer Brant Herrett made some last-minute changes to the software configuration of our new Wheatstone digital audio control surface. Brant had been working in this room pretty much non-stop over the past few days ironing out the last few kinks in the installation.

Marketplace has one local break, about halfway through the program. And so it was, at 5:46, that our new afternoon news host, Duncan Lively, turned down the Marketplace transition music, switched on the mic, and did our first post-upgrade local break from the main studio.

The number on the back of Mic 1 has always been upside down, for reasons I have never understood. Why mess with tradition?

Here is another view of the new studio, looking over Duncan’s right shoulder. You can see J.D. Hillard, who oversees all our news, talk and information programming, looking as if he’s cueing Duncan to do something, which as best as I can remember, he wasn’t. You can also see an indication of radio’s obsession with time: there are no less than four clocks visible in this picture!

We are all very happy to have successfully completed this project — KUSP’s first major studio renovations in fifteen years. Thanks go out again to the hundreds of KUSP contributors who made a gift in support of Upgrade 2011. Looking back at the blog posts from this project, I hope you’ll be able to see what a tremendous positive difference your generosity has made at our station.

Later on this spring we’ll have an open house at the studio, so you’ll be able to see all of this in person!