Ethics can be considered as a set of right and wrong way of conduct. When we talk about corporate ethics – it envelopes the written or unwritten principles or values that determine the actions within the company. The culture lays down the good and bad ways of behaviour. The specific corporate culture is mostly controlled by the people in a managerial position because they make most of the decisions for the company and they have power over the internal stakeholders like employees, vendors and suppliers and others.
Whistle blowing can be defined as exposing the wrongdoings prevailing in an organization. Ethics in businesses and organisations demands the presence of whistle blowing as the regulatory element of the daily on-goings of an organization. The movie “The Insider” deals with this crucial idea of whistleblowing. The character of Jeffrey Wigand, the protagonist, is the moral anchor of the movie. He lands on the decision of publicly revealing what tobacco companies were doing with nicotine to make cigarettes more addictive. Despite threats, he was courageous enough to speak what was correct.
What is legal and what should be illegal is always decided by the government and the body of justice. Therefore, anything that goes against them can be essentially considered as illegal whistleblowing. If a soldier is whistleblowing against the atrocities of the army inflicted on a village, it is considered to be illegal. On the other hand, in the corporate if the employee has signed a document that claims to preserve the confidentiality of the company and anyway goes on to reveal a harmful secret, he can be tried under law.
Just like whistleblowing in the real world, in the movie as well, a lot of backups and support is required in order to carry out the entire venture and to make it a successful one. Therefore, Wigand had to give up his job, the joy of being with his family along with his reputation to stand up for his morals.
A network is discreetly built in between media houses, corporates and the government. Somehow each one is controlled by another body at some point. They have their agreements, which is clearly shown in the movie. The channel CBS (that featured 60 minutes) interceded and asked to mellow down Wigand’s interview. This network was controlled by Laurence Tisch’s family. This family also ran the Lorillard Inc. which was a tobacco firm and had negotiations with the company is question Brown and Williamson for purchasing quite a lot of cigarette brands. Tisch’s son had testified before the Congress along with B&W’s Sandefur. The CBS possibly feared a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from B&W if they showed Wigand’s interview and it would negate a pending sale of the network to Westinghouse Electric. This particular sale was supposed to be profitable for top CBS executives from the stock options, which happened anyway.
Media is considered to be the fourth pillar democracy and is rightfully called so. Whatever media shows us, we receive it as the ultimate truth. All the propaganda of the government and all the advertisements that drive us to commodity fetishism are fed to us by the media. Be it the digital media or the print media, we consume news as it comes to us. The possession of media by the corporates and the government has become the way of the world.
Examples of such occurrences is how NaMo TV was established just to promote Narendra Modi as brand, to say what all good things he has done throughout the period of his reign. It would show the speeches of the Prime Minister and what he is about to do. On the other hand, Mukesh Ambani owns so many channels like Network 18 and Viacom. Mukesh Ambani has known connections with the government and we can be rest assured that the content that goes out on news channels can be tampered.
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