The Telegraph:

The BBC’s Panorama programme sent undercover reporters to Pegatron factories on the outskirts of Shanghai, where it claims to have uncovered poor treatment of workers and a breach of standards on workers’ hours.

In an email to around 5,000 staff across the UK, Apple senior vice president of operations Jeff Williams said both himself and the chief executive were “deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain or mislead our customers in any way”.

“Panorama’s report implied that Apple isn’t improving working conditions,” he continued. “Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.”

A core part of the allegations center on Apple’s use of tin from Indonesia. Apple cannot control the sourcing of this tin at a fine enough level to guarantee that that part of the supply chain is completely clean.

“Apple has publicly stated that tin from Indonesia ends up in our products, and some of that tin likely comes from illegal mines,” Williams countered.

“Tens of thousands of artisanal miners are selling tin through many middlemen to the smelters who supply to component suppliers who sell to the world. The government is not addressing the issue, and there is widespread corruption in the undeveloped supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia visited by the BBC, and of course we are appalled by what’s going on there.

“Apple has two choices: We could make sure all of our suppliers buy tin from smelters outside of Indonesia, which would probably be the easiest thing for us to do and would certainly shield us from criticism. But it would be the lazy and cowardly path, because it would do nothing to improve the situation for Indonesian workers or the environment since Apple consumes a tiny fraction of the tin mined there. We chose the second path, which is to stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution.”

Seems to me that the Panorama program was very selective in their reporting, that they were determined to paint Apple as a villain, rather than tell both sides of the story. Follow the headline link to read the full text of Jeff Williams’ letter.