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 THE
INSIDER EXPOSES HOW "60 MINUTES" BOWED TO 30 PIECES OF
SILVER
Publicity about The Insider stresses
the courage of a whistleblowing research scientist, formerly
employed by a tobacco company, who in 1995 exposed the fact
that cigarettes have been altered in recent decades to enhance
their addictivity. As a result of his testimony, there have
been successful lawsuits, with damages totaling $246 billion
to fifty states in recovery of Medicare and Medicaid funds.
Indeed, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe) is at
the center of the film. We see how in 1993 he was fired by
Brown & Williamson, a tobacco company, because he objected
to the fraud, how he and his family were terrorized (death
threats, lawsuits, smear campaigns) to the point that his
spouse divorced him and gained custody of his two daughters,
how he testified in court against the tobacco companies, and
how he then became "teacher of the year" in his new career
as a high school teacher in Kentucky. But the unexpected exposé
of The Insider, occupying more film footage,
is how CBS mishandled the story. The focus is on Lowell Bergman
(played by Al Pacino), former Ramparts muckraker, who
is a producer of Mike Wallace's segment of the television
program "60 Minutes." Bergman accidentally gets wind of a
possible big story from Wigand, cultivates Wigand to divulge
the incredible secrets of the most celebrated fraud in American
history, promises that Wigand will be protected from bodily
harm by supplying attorneys and bodyguards, and escorts Wigand
both to court and to an interview with Mike Wallace in the
CBS News studio in New York. At this point, however, the tobacco
company threatens CBS with a lawsuit that would bankrupt the
network. CBS corporate executives demur, tell CBS News to
shelve the interview, and Mike Wallace (played by Christopher
Plummer) capitulates. Bergman feels betrayed; he promised
Wigand that the story would air, so he does an end run: He
leaks the story to the New York Times to humiliate
CBS, which finally runs the interview. Then Bergman quits
to join the faculty at the University of California in Berkeley
while serving as a producer of the PBS investigative program
"Frontline."
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Directed
by Michael Mann, based on the Vanity Fair article "The
Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner, The Insider
reveals how unchecked corporate power has tamed formerly independent
journalism, a paradigm that can serve to explain why the public
agenda excludes so many urgent social issues-the barbarous
death penalty sentence inflicted upon so many innocent Blacks,
lack of medical insurance for citizens of the richest country
on earth, elections bought through gaping campaign finance
loopholes, and many others. However, the distributor, Disney/Touchstone,
owns rival ABC, and there is a hint in the film that Peter
Jennings would not have blinked if he got the story first.
We see testimony before Congress by the "seven dwarfs," the
CEOs of the major tobacco companies, as they opine that cigarettes
are not addictive, contrary to evidence reported by their
own scientists, yet their perjury has not brought about prison
terms for any of them. We hear a detailed explanation of the
chemical process whereby additives have been deliberately
designed to make cigarettes "nicotine delivery systems." A
single puff, thus, delivers carcinogenic substances directly
to the body, while non-tobacco additives hook minds to repeat
the self-destructive habit until serious health problems emerge.
Wigand is currently on the lecture circuit, donating his speaking
fees to Smoke-Free Kids, a nonprofit that he started in his
new hometown, Charleston, South Carolina. The Insider,
which bears the tagline "Warning: Exposing the Truth May be
Hazardous," has been nominated by the Political Film Society
for two 1999 awards -- as the best film exposé and the best
film raising consciousness of the need for greater democracy.
MH
NOMINEES
FOR 1999
DEMOCRACY:
Fight
Club, The
Insider,
Naturally
Native, Three
Kings
EXPOSÉ: Bastards, Cabaret
Balkan, The Insider,
Naturally Native, One
Man's Hero, Three
Kings, Three
Seasons
HUMAN RIGHTS:
The
General's Daughter, Hard,
Naturally
Native, One
Man's Hero, Three
Kings, Three
Seasons, Xiu Xiu
PEACE: Cabaret
Balkan, Earth, One
Man's Hero, Three
Kings, West Beirut
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