When good journalism goes bad

Oh, Ira.

That's what I thought when I heard the "This American Life," pretty much the best example of modern radio journalism, was burned bad by a source, a self-serving slimeball named Mike Daisy who also got over on other media platforms in the past few weeks.

Ira Glass is the creator and driving force behind TAL and I respect and enjoy his work so much that sometimes I plan my weekend around being able to catch the local broadcast rather than wait for it to be archived on Sunday evening.

It's that good.

See, TAL, which is funded mostly by listener donations (I give at least $10 a year to the show and more to my local public radio station, WFAE; when I make more, they all will get more and that's a promise) is impeccable with its research. I'm pretty sure they've had a clarification here and there in more than a decade of broadcasting, but never a full blown retraction like this past week.

Turns out that for whatever reason they didn't go the extra mile and vet one of the sources Daisy had sighted. What makes it worse is that another NPR journalist who sniffed out Daisy's odious scam tracked down the pivotal source, in China, in minutes with a Google search.

It reminds me of the blown story about W's slacker National Guard stint that cost Dan Rather so dearly. In something like 5o years of great journalism, Rather may have gotten it wrong once in a while but never that we heard about and the W story, though so much of it checks out, was such a spectacular embarrassment.

Like Rather, Ira (who also delegates a lot of legwork, out of necessity) had to fall on his sword and he did so maybe not so much gracefully (although it was that) but so sincerely. Look, I don't know the guy, but he sounded as pissed off as he should be. As pissed off as I'd be.

The question is, how much damage does this do to his show?

Not too much I hope. It's such great work. A truly creative blend of journalism and entertainment. For the show to suffer because of one misstep - one I'm sure Ira and his crew have learned from and will never repeat - would be the real tragedy.

The only thing I don't understand is why the subjects of the piece - Apple and some subcontractors, not to mention the People's Republic of China - haven't sued Daisy for libel. His scam seems to fit the definition of libel and thus his stage show that was excerpted in TAL shouldn't be protected speech.