California Baptist University The Insider Movie Discussion

View the movie, The Insider 1999

The purpose of this assignment is three-fold:

1. To help you understand the relationship between secrecy, lying and confidentiality.
2. To enable you to expand your ability to detect when lies are covering secrets.
3. To help you understand the experience of being a whistleblower.
4. To apply class concepts in the analysis of The Insider.

Your assignment is to apply the principles and concepts covered in the presentation on secrecy and revelation in an analysis of the film, The Insider. Your analysis should lean heavily on the article, The Man Who Knew Too Much, to help refresh your memory and, perhaps, to help you frame your answers. Contracts of Silence will be useful in addressing question 2. Images, videos, and web links should be used to reinforce the arguments you make. Outside sources may be used, but should be cited using MLA format.

1. The mainstream media often face enormous challenges in trying to give audiences an accurate picture of the world. For individual journalists, there are extraordinary pressures and obstacles to getting at the truth and telling the stories audiences want and need.

You may select Jeffry Wigand, 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace, producer Lowell Bergman, executive producer Don Hewitt, the Wall Street Journal editor who helped stop the smear or the NY Times reporter who exposed the inside story on how CBS handled the Wigand affair.

All of these people had significant personal and institutional pressures, some more than others. Please do not select your character because you believe everyone will write about that person. No team can analyze this case the same as someone else, unless they cheat.

Your essay should focus on how the principles and values of concealment and revelation apply to the tobacco case or the case at CBS News. 500 words.