The show's host, Ira Glass, said in a statement that Mr. Daisey "lied" to him and Brian Reed, a producer of the program, about the details of the injured workers had described Mr. Daisey Foxconn meeting, a factory in China where Apple products are made.
The story of Mr. Daisey, originally aired on January 6, was an adaptation of 39 minutes of his one-man stage show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." The show broadcasts and condemns the working conditions at Foxconn, and storytelling helped boost public concern about the production of popular products like the iPad and iPhone.
But after hearing the history of radio, Rob Schmitz, a correspondent in China for another radio show, "Marketplace", found holes in the stories told and Mr. Daisey worked with "This American Life", to refute certain parts . The results will be disseminated by "This American Life" this weekend as part of a full hour dedicated to the retraction and explanation.
A report of "market" on Friday, Mr. Schmitz acknowledged that others had actually witnessed the harsh conditions in factories that supplied Apple. "What makes this a bit complicated," he said, "is that things Daisey lied about things that have happened in China: Workers who manufacture Apple products have been poisoned by hexane. Audits show that the company Apple has captured the under-age workers in a handful of suppliers. These things are rare, but taken together, form an easily understood story about Apple. "
Mr. Schmitz and other journalists have been covering the working conditions in suppliers of Apple for years. In a recent front-page article, The New York Times described the conditions of Chinese workers in detail. The article was based on numerous sources, including some within Apple, and the information involved in China. Weeks later, Apple announced that an outside organization had begun to audit the working conditions in factories that manufacture the products.
Being identified as a fabulist, Mr. Daisey is at risk of harm to the cause which is defended. For example, in his stage show and radio, Mr. Daisey had described meeting the Foxconn mistreated workers in southern China, relying on a translator to conduct the talks. But in a later interview with Mr. Schmitz, the translator disputed some of the details of the meetings - as a worker whose hand was injured in a Foxconn plant see an iPad for the first time he called the "magic" - and suggested that Mr. Daisey did not witness what he said yes.
When interviewed by Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Glass for the program this weekend, Mr. Daisey said: "I will not say I did not take some shortcuts in my passion to be heard. But I'm behind the work. "
In a blog post Friday, lamented allow your program to be reused on the radio for "This American Life" is governed by journalistic rules and expectations that stage shows do not. "But this is my only regret," he wrote. "I am proud that my work seems to have caused a growing storm of care and concern for the often deplorable conditions in which many high-tech products we love are assembled in China."
Apple declined to comment on the retraction.
Mr. Daisey presented its case against Apple in other forums, such as on television and in October, in an opinion piece for The New York Times. On Friday, the newspaper added an editor's note online for the item and removed a paragraph describing the worker with the injured hand.
Retraction of "This American Life" is a shame and a record one for the program, a product of WBEZ, a Chicago radio station. The program is distributed nationally by Public Radio International and is partly dependent on donations from listeners.
When the story was first broadcast on 6 January, Mr. Glass had recognized the risk inherent in the reuse of a monologue. After seeing the stage show, he told listeners, "I wondered, did it? And so we actually spent a couple of weeks making sure everything he says in his program."
What Mr. Glass did not tell listeners was that during the process of checking the facts, there was at least one reason to doubt the story of Mr. Daisey. During the process, when Mr. Daisey requested information contact the translator, said he had no way to get there. He also said he changed his name in the show.
"At that point, we would have killed the story," Glass said Friday. "But other things Daisey told us about the operations of Apple in China check out, and saw no reason to doubt him. Do not think he was lying to us and the public about the details of its history. That was a mistake. "
One man Mr. Daisey's show opened last October to mostly positive reviews from critics and became a hit for the actor and the Public Theater in New York, where tickets were sold quickly. (The theater, like most Off Broadway companies, does not reveal its box office figures.)
After his tour ended in December relatively long, executives at the Public Theater chose to bring back the work for an encore run in January and has not ceased to be a popular attraction.
In a statement Friday, the theater, said the presentation by Mr. Daisey reveals "human truths in story form," adding: "Mike is an artist, not a journalist. However, we wish that he had been more precise with us and our audience about what was and was not his personal experience in the work. "
The play, incidentally, is scheduled to end his last race on Sunday.
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