The ethical evaluation of any event will be necessarily biased not because the event is so controversial but rather because people have strong and definite ideas about the right and wrongs of certain issues. This is the reason we have not yet been able to create a solution to debates that are moralistic in nature from handgun use to abortion to euthanasia and beyond.

Thus, when we try to analyze the movie The Insider through an ethical perspective relating it to real live events there will of course be a personal bias involved. The Insider was a take that fictionalized real life events involving a story telecast by CBS or rather not telecast. The produced Michael Mann relates how a story that was put together by two reporters to be shown on 60 minutes was shelved when a law suit was threatened by a tobacco company. While CBS did not go on air the New York Times did and caused CBS to realize they had made the wrong decision. Wherein the dilemma?

Well the story that was shelved concerned a scientist Jeffrey Wigand who had been fired by tobacco giant Brown & Williamson when he realized that cigarettes were more hazardous to health than considered before and tobacco companies increased the drug stats to ensure addiction. However, he could not take the information to the authorities because of an agreement with the company. 60 minute investigative reporters find a way out of the agreement and persuade him to testify and when he does so against personal threat they never air the story!

The ethical factors in the story are related to greed, power and bad judgment. To air a potentially new worthy story CBS reporters make an individual go against his better judgment and make a sacrifice that could be dangerous. Yet, when the time comes for the individual to get what was promised they back out under pressure and promise of money.

The story highlights the machinations of power and how media integrity and so called freedom is compromised when power and money are involved. The big corporations always gain the profits while the individuals are the ones who are hardest hit. CBS was more concerned in the end with the loss it would face when against the tobacco company regardless of the fact that it was directly responsible for making Wigand’s life a complete disaster. Wigand had sacrificed everything personally to ensure that the tobacco company did not harm any more people and yet, CBS a huge corporation was unwilling to take the same risk.

It can be said that while Wigand and the CBS reporter strived to ensure the truth was brought out the corporations like CBS and the tobacco company tried their best to suppress the information. The film shows that the tobacco company executives violated the law by perjury for monetary profit. CBS undermined its journalistic integrity by looking at profits rather that presenting the need for truth. CBS may have believed that suppressing the story would be sacrificing only two individuals but the other employees would not come under threat but, James Stuart Mill, as per his utilitarian principle would have believed differently. For Mills believed that the ethical dilemma could be solved by ensuring the path chosen was one which offers the greatest happiness for the greatest number. By playing the story CBS may have saved the lives of millions who smoke everyday but by choosing to shelve the story they undermined the value of its own journalistic code.