It's not been a good year for This American Life.
First their story about abuse at Apple factories in China turned out to be piece of fiction. Now all this with their contributor Jonah Lehrer.
First their story about abuse at Apple factories in China turned out to be piece of fiction. Now all this with their contributor Jonah Lehrer.
Mike Daisey is an interesting case, and someone who published a lot on the story he fabricated in a lot of different outlets. This American Life were the ones were simply the ones who confronted Daisey directly and publicly. Jonah Lehrer, the extent to which he was a contributor to TAL, was certainly not a frequent contributor (in fact I don't remember which of their episodes he's been on at all), but he is much more associated with his magazine work.
Actually i checked This American Life's site. They don't have Jonah Lehrer listed at all (although they do have a colleague of mine listed twice under misspellings of her name): http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/contributor
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/r...
My opinion is that they handled it well, but 'simply the ones who confronted Daisey directly and publicly' throws away quite a bit of the story.