Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency?
Jeffrey, where are you going with this? Where are you going? (Pause) You are important to a lot of people, Jeffrey. You think about that, and you think about them. (Pause) I’m all out of heroes, man. Guys like you are in short supply.
You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he’s only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who’s out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he’s not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That’s why we’re not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!
This news division has been villified by the New York Times! In print, on television, for caving to corporate interests!
No, you fucked you! Don’t invert stuff! Big Tobacco tried to smear Wigand, you bought it. The Wall Street Journal, here: not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment, refutes Big Tobacco’s smear campaign as the lowest form of character assassination! And now, even now, when every word of what Wigand has said on our show is printed, the entire deposition of his testimony in a court of law in the State of Mississippi, the cat *totally* out of the bag, you’re still standing here debating! Don, what the hell else do you need?
You’d better take a *good* look, because I’m getting two things: pissed off and curious.
In all that time, Mike, did you ever get out a plane, walk into a room and find that a source for a story changed his mind? Lost his heart? Walked out on us? Not one fucking time. You want to know why?
What do I tell the my source for the next tough story, huh? ‘Hang in with us, you’ll be ok maybe’? No. What got broken here doesn’t go back together.
I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not ’til right fucking now. When I came on this job, I came with my word intact. I’m gonna leave with my word intact. Fuck the rules of the game!
And I don’t like paranoid accusations! I’m a journalist. Think. Use your head. How do I operate as a journalist by screwing the people who could provide me with information before they provided me with it?
I’m Lowell Bergman, I’m from 60 Minutes. You know, you take the 60 Minutes out of that sentence, nobody returns your phone call.
Well that’s the whole point, Jeffrey. That’s the whole point. Anyone’s. Everyone’s. They are gonna look under every rock, dig up every flaw, every mistake you’ve ever made. They are going to distort and exaggerate everything you’ve ever done, man. Don’t you understand?
“Words.” While you’ve been dicking around some fucking company golf tournaments, I’ve been out in the world, giving my word… and backing it up with action. Now, are you gonna go and do this thing, or not?
