Plot Summary for
The Insider (1999) More at IMDbPro »

Balls-out "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman sniffs a story when a former research biologist for Brown & Williamson, Jeff Wigand, won't talk to him. When the company leans hard on Wigand to honor a confidentiality agreement, he gets his back up. Trusting Bergman and despite a crumbling marriage, he goes on camera for a Mike Wallace interview and risks arrest for contempt of court. Westinghouse is negotiating to buy CBS, so CBS attorneys advise CBS News to shelve the interview and avoid a lawsuit. "60 Minutes" and CBS News bosses cave, Wigand's hung out to dry, Bergman is compromised, and the CEOs of Big Tobacco may get away with perjury. Can the truth will out? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

Based on a true story about a CBS 60 Minutes-episode in 1994 on malpractices in the tobacco industry, that was not aired because CBS parent company Westinghouse objected. Pacino plays the 60 Minutes Producer. Written by Viktor Frölke {frolke@aol.com}

This film tells the true story of Jeffrey Wigand, a former tobacco executive, who decided to appear on the CBS-TV News show "60 Minutes." As matter of conscience partially prodded by producer Lowell Bergman, he revealed that, the tobacco industry was not only aware that cigarettes are addictive & harmful, but deliberately worked on increasing that addictiveness. Unfortunately, both protagonists of this story learn the hard way that simply telling the truth is not enough as they struggle against both Big Tobacco's attempts to silence them and the CBS TV Network's own cowardly complict preference of putting money as a higher priority over the truth. Written by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com}

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