“Taiwanese-owned Foxconn has had seven suicides this year,” Mattimore reports. “That sounds like a lot, but the firm has an estimated 800,000 workers, more than 300,000 of them at a single plant in Shenzhen.”
Mattimore reports, “Although exact figures are hard to come by, even the most conservative estimate for China’s suicide rate is 14 per 100,000 per year (World Health Organization). In other words, Foxconn’s suicide epidemic is actually lower than China’s national average of suicides.”
“If the only upshot of these stories was heightened attention to workplace issues, such as improving workers’ conditions, then the stories would not be troubling. The problem is that people are fired and the stories become political ammunition for various groups,” Mattimore writes. “Another problem is that responsible businesses like Foxconn often take benevolent, but misguided actions to try and ‘solve’ their problem… Another troubling facet of misleading the public with the Foxconn suicide story is that there is a very real desire to scapegoat Foxconn. That tendency is understandable because it is human nature to want to shift the blame for the act of suicide to someone other than the perpetrator. However, that shift should not be mistaken for reasonably reading the situation.”
“The larger problem stems from the fact that most journalists have not been taught to critically examine statistics. They follow the herd which often means that they report numbers without providing readers a context for making sense of those numbers,” Mattimore writes. “Reporters often write stories with statistics that are incomplete, misleading, or just plain wrong. Hopefully, the public will wake up to the fact that there is nothing wrong at Foxconn and demand that newspapers act more responsibly and begin supplying some context when they decide to instigate their next corporate suicide watch.”
Full article – highly recommended – here.
[Attribution: ZDNet. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “jax44” for the heads up.]
I find it incredible that we are even discussing this in this way–there should be no suicides at this company, period! What the hell? Who cares if the media has it wrong–Foxconn has some serious problems and they need to figure out what is happening.
The suicides are a tragedy, not the media’s inability to fact check. I am utterly offended by this post on this site. gimme a freaking break.
@mike
You’re missing the point. Suicides happen in any population. In this company, suicides happen at a lower rate than the larger population. But stories are giving out a context-free suicide rate among the company’s workers and then making a leap to assume that the company is connected.
If you’re solely looking at the suicide rate and where these people work, the conclusion must be that Foxconn is doing something right — since it’s workers are less likely to commit suicide than the population as a whole.
However, early on in these comments, Jerry made a valuable point. Without considering other demographic factors, this comparison is meaningless. Foxconn workers, as a group, may be demographically more or less likely to commit suicide (they are all, presumably, in their own subset of income, age, geographic location, etc., that’s distinct from the population as a whole). Without knowing that breakdown, we actually don’t know whether the suicide rate there is more or less than should be expected.
What we do know is that these stories are irresponsible. They don’t bother to take the basic step of identifying whether there is really a problem here, and based on the scant facts we have — that Foxconn workers commit suicide at a lower rate than the rest of the population — the only conclusion that can be drawn is that working at Foxconn makes you less likely to kill yourself.
Not “media blows it.”
The word “media,” is the plural of medium. So it’s “media blow it.”
The word refers to the multiple outlets of mass communication. The fact it is commonly misused as a singular by those who don’t know any better, is no excuse. Next are we going to read “beg the question,” when you mean “raise the question?” Look it up.
@ m159
When “media” refers to the “mass media” (as it does in this case), it is not necessarily wrong to treat it as singular. It is like saying “the news reporting industry blows it.”
You are treating this usage like a specific form of communication, such the television being a “medium.” It is similar to saying “Apple works hard…” or “Apple work hard…” Both are technically correct depending on usage. “Apple works hard to hire talented people” may be appropriate because the company (singular) is the subject. “Apple work hard to make customers happy” may be appropriate because the Apple’s employees are “Apple” in this case. I tend to always treat “Apple” as singular, and find the plural usage jarring when I see it.
ken
I realize it has become acceptable in some circles to use “media” as a singular. Call me a traditionalist, but not everyone agrees. Firstly, it singularizes a strict plural form from Latin, which other collective nouns that come to mind don’t. And then the path to acceptability has not been by solving a syntactic problem, but rather by bludgeoning its way into the language through constant misuse. It’s like giving up on the lie/lay thing just because most people have it wrong.
I agree, Apple is a singular, even though there are many employees. It’s a singular company, like “the team works hard.”
@ m159
> I agree, Apple is a singular, even though there are many employees. It’s a singular company, like “the team works hard.”
Yet “team” could be consider a “collective noun,” like “family” or “class” or “Apple.” So depending on usage, using the singular or plural form for the verb is acceptable. This is not something new.
But yeah, I hate it when I see people write “Apple are” instead of “Apple is.” It’s like they are intentionally making it look and sound awkward. They may be referring to a collective group of employees, but it is still a singular group, so I prefer to always treat it as singular. But in some cases, it seems more natural to be wrong. For example, “data” is really plural of “datum,” but I would never say or write, “The data are misleading.” Media/medium is kind of like that to me…
… now, back to our regularly scheduled program.
The Republicans at MDN quoting the Communist Peoples Daily?
What is this world coming to?
I just assume the recent obsession with China is Americans trying to distract themselves from their own bad reputation for mass-murder and torture.
Foxcon = 7 suicides per 800,000
California = 72 suicides per 800,000
Hey, look, the working conditions HERE must be 10 times worse!! Oh noes!!
/sarc off
Media blows it? So what’s new?
MDN is now a puppet of the Chinese internet propaganda machine. How incredibly sad.
Is there any limit to the lengths Apple zealots will go to defend their lord and master’s draconian business practices?
Obviously not.