[June 13th marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a controversial moment made possible by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Ellsberg and other whistleblowers, leading up to a weekend post on one of the true heroes of the Trump era.]
On two things Michael Mann’s The Insider gets
right about Wigand, and one layer it’s important to add.
Inspired by journalist
Marie Brenner’s
excellent 1996 Vanity Fair article “The Man Who
Knew Too Much,” Michael Mann’s 1999 film The Insider tells the true story of tobacco company scientist turned
whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand
(played perfectly by Russell
Crowe in the film). One of the things that the film gets very right is (by
all accounts—like most of my blog’s subjects, I obviously don’t know the man)
Wigand’s genuine “everyman” identity and perspective, which is illustrated
potently by his very gradual and in many ways reluctant decision to blow the
whistle on tobacco company lies and malfeasance—long before he did so he had
left his company (Brown &
Williamson), taking a severance package and signing a very restrictive
non-disclosure agreement in the process, and was working as a high school
science teacher. Unlike Monday’s subject Daniel Ellsberg, who had been
something of a lifelong foreign policy crusader, or Tuesday’s subject Karen
Silkwood, who was a union organizer and activist before she decided to blow the
whistle, Wigand was simply a scientist who got fed up with his work and
industry and left it, apparently never intending to do anything more than that.
He ended up
doing a great deal more than that because of his evolving relationship with CBS
and 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, played
by Al Pacino in
another element of Wigand’s story that the film gets right. Bergman initially
worked with Wigand as a scientist advisor for a different story, but gradually
learned of Wigand’s intimate knowledge of secret and scandalous information and
helped convince him to blow the whistle on B&W and tobacco companies more
generally. Yet as he did so, Bergman had to struggle against CBS executives
seeking to squash or neuter the story nearly as much as Wigand did against his
former employers, which helps us remember a vital and sometimes overlooked
level to whistleblowing: the way in which journalists not only support and
complement the whistleblowers, but themselves have to play a similar role both
within their industry and in contrast to the hierarchies of power in society
more broadly. The journalists do not usually take on the same risks as the
whistleblowers, but they are nonetheless interconnected: a duality exemplified
by my favorite scene in
the film, a phone call between Bergman and Wigand where the former is on a
beach (and so in a beautiful spot, if there because he is on a forced “vacation”
from his job) and the latter in a hotel room under guard due to threats to his
life.
The film ends
not too long after that moment, with the two characters more triumphant in
their quest to air the full story. That’s not only understandable but
inevitable, given the timing of the film’s production and release, but it does
mean that there are additional layers to Wigand’s story and life that can now
be added into the mix (along with his winning a 1996 Kentucky teacher of the year
award, which I believe the film does mention in its closing text). To my mind
the most important and inspiring such layer is the work he’s done since leaving
teaching: founding and running the non-profit organization Smoke-Free
Kids Inc., which is dedicated to helping young people avoid tobacco
products. Often we think about the negative consequences and aftermaths for
whistleblowers, which even when not as extreme as Karen Silkwood’s can indeed
be destructive for far too many (including the remaining folks on whom I’ll
focus in this series). But another part of the aftermath is their continued
work to change both their world and the world as a whole for the better, and no
whistleblower more inspiringly exemplifies that ongoing effort than does
Jeffrey Wigand.
Next
WhistleblowerStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other whistleblowers you’d highlight?
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