>"...What gives this version its kick--and what has made it fodder for
>columnists for almost six months--is that the people who betray the
>whistle-blower are among the most famous and powerful journalists in
>America: Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt, the co-anchor and the executive
>producer of 60 Minutes. If they could be pressured to "spike" a segment that
>they knew to be true, the film implicitly asks, how much chance do others
>have of breaking stories about corporate wrongdoing? And what about news
>personnel with a financial stake in their companies? Even journalists and
>editors known for their integrity tend to look the other way at their own
>companies' malfeasances when they hear words like 'stock options' and
>'IPO.'"
Or what about filmmakers with their own stake in their company? In his excellent review of the film in this week's New York Press, Godfrey Cheshire points out a major flaw on the part of this allegedly brave film from the creator of Miami Vice:
<quote> Given that the film has such problems dramatizing the evils of Big Tobacco and the character of Wigand, it's perhaps unavoidable that the tale's moral chess match would get moved over to 60 Minutes. Yet this is where ethics become a big issue and where the film's own become a bit suspect. Here's the nub of the matter: 60 Minutes has a whistle-blowing interview with Wigand that the show unprecedentedly decides not to air after network lawyers claim that it could provoke a lawsuit for "tortious interference," i.e., a charge by B&W [Brown & Williamson] that CBS induced Wigand to break the law to which his confidentiality agreement bound him. According to the film, there's something else behind this move: CBS bigs fear that such a lawsuit could jeopardize a merger deal with Westinghouse that's currently in the works. The film elides, however, another point that Brenner's article [in Vanity Fair, that the movie is loosely based on] puts far more emphasis on: at the same time as the Westinghouse deal, Lorillard, a tobacco company owned by CBS chairman Laurence Tisch, was angling to buy six discount cigarette brands owned by Brown & Williamson (it eventually succeeded)!
Brenner makes it clear that the 60 Minutes gang, in trying to figure out the corporate pressure on them over Wigand, knew about the Westinghouse deal and didn't know about the Lorillard. Mann would probably cite that as his reason for not delving into the latter. But it's worth pointing out that Lorillard had become, in Brenner's words, "an immense cash bonanza for the Loews Corporation-the parent company controlled by Tisch and his brother, Robert-earning approximately $700 million a year." This couldn't be the same Loews Corp. that operates the Loews movie theater chain, could it? And that couldn't have anything to do with why Mann doesn't go after Larry Tisch and his son Andrew, the then-chairman of Lorillard, but rather targets Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, who are made to seem like spineless, equivocating chumps next to Bergman's tower of rectitude and outraged integrity? </quote>
Eric