Dr. Jeffrey Wigand is a whistle-blower who was fired from his position of vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation in 1993. He was interviewed for a segment of the CBS show 60 Minutes in August 1995, but the network made a highly controversial decision not to air the interview as initially scheduled. The segment was pulled because CBS management was worried about the possibility of a multi billion-dollar lawsuit for tortuous interference; that is, interfering with Wigand’s confidentiality agreement with Brown & Williamson. The interview finally aired on February 4, 1996, after the Wall Street Journal published a confidential November 1995 deposition that Wigand gave in a Mississippi case against the tobacco industry, which repeated many of the charges he made to CBS. In the interview, Wigand said that Brown & Williamson had scrapped plans to make a safer cigarette and continued to use a flavoring in pipe tobacco that was known to cause cancer in laboratory animals. Wigand also charged that tobacco industry executives testified untruthfully before Congress about tobacco product safety. Wigand suffered greatly for his actions; he lost his job, his home, his family, and his friends. Visit Wigand’s Web site (www.jeffreywigand.com) and answer the following questions. (You may also want to watch The Insider,a 1999 movie based on Wigand’s experience.)
• What motivated Wigand to take an executive position at a tobacco company and then five years later to denounce the industry’s efforts to minimize the health and safety issues of tobacco use?
• What whistle-blower actions did Dr. Wigand take?
• If you were in Dr. Wigand’s position, what would you have done?