Separating bunk from fact in Malcolm Gladwell's performance

Thanks for posting this latest journalistic follow-up to a story found on public radio's This American Life program.

As I reminded Hacker News participants just a day ago,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3716043

Malcolm Gladwell is on record

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html

saying in an interview,

"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little?

"A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."

So if the statement here is that any reader of any published article, and any listener to any public speech or performance, should check the facts, sure, let's all check the facts. Fact-checking takes time and effort, and for sure we all have to rely on more than Wikipedia (which any member of the general public like me can edit) to know what the facts are. It's always going to be necessary to hold factual statements tentatively. The more interesting and bold conclusions we might be tempted to draw from some striking factual statement, the more we should check it out to see if the statement can be verified.

See Michael Shermer's new book The Believing Brain,

http://www.amazon.com/Believing-Brain-Conspiracies-How-Const...

which I am reading right now, for much more on how easy it is to believe a statement without checking it for accuracy first, and how hard it is to be sure we are even doing even checking of the most important things we believe.

This same article came to my mind after I first heard about the TAL retraction of Daisey's Apple piece. I only learned about Gladwell's dramatic embellishments long after first hearing him tell the tale on The Moth as I was Googling for the phrase ("perverse and often baffling") that he recounts competing with his Washington Post colleague to insert into newspaper stories.

The Moth is a storytelling show and it's a great rather harmless story, though I was sorry to learn that it was largely fabricated. I think Daisey has a credible defense of his stage show when he claims that he shaped facts to enhance its dramatic impact and emotional truth. But that was why I turned it off when I heard it on TAL. The first-person storytelling format didn't seem appropriate to the subject matter and I had no doubt that Daisey was crafting and overdramatizing the truth for his performance. Given the suffering of some of the factory workers he represents in his piece, the format and his righteous tone rubbed me the wrong way: was he indignant about what happened to these workers or was he indignant because it plays well theatrically?

The TAL Retraction show made it clear that Glass and TAL were explicit with Daisey in informing him that, prior to going on the air, his TAL piece had to meet a journalistic standard of accuracy. He deliberately subverted that standard and it was painful listening to him cling to his denials and rationalizations during the Retraction piece.

From the article:

As disclaimers go, Glass' is weak, something he acknowledges.

"It seemed best for the story if this were kept a little vague," writes Glass. "I thought it would be lousy and undermining and killjoyish if—at the end of a story—a radio host came on and said 'that wasn't true.' Seemed nicer and more artful to simply raise the possibility that it might or might not be true. I figured: the audience is smart. A little goes a long way."

Edit: the money quote from Gladwell is good too:

"My story was true in spirit," he e-mails. "The details were happily and gleefully and deliberately exaggerated and embellished and made up by me—and I am quite sure that not a single person in the audience the night I told it thought otherwise. Anyone who would fact check a tall tale like that either has no sense of humor or is on crack."

While I understand and respect the general unhappiness with the TAL and Daisey situation. I think this is an unreasonable extrapolation.

Both shows (TAL, and especially The Moth) are about storytelling. There are times (like the Daisey incident) where TAL tries to take on the role of journalist, but, at the end of the day both programs are about entertainment and thought-provocation. Whether or not Gladwell told a tall tale does not diminish either program's value as a storytelling medium.

I think it's unfair to blame Malcolm for the fact that journalistic publications failed to research and understand what the Moth is actually about. Yes, he could have done a better job of finding what people are writing about him and correcting it, but I feel like the primary failure here was on these secondary sources.

Back in March 13, 2008 Gladwell claims his story is not true.

See the end of his blog post where he write:

There is a disclaimer at the end of the This American Life broadcast, to the effect that the Moth is a place where "people come to tell both true stories and occasional tall tales." As I think should be obvious if you listen to it, my story definitely belongs to the "tall tale" category. I hope you enjoy it. But please do so with a rather large grain of salt.

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2008/03/tall-tales.h...