Lowell Bergman quotes from The Insider (1999)

View Quote You'd better take a good look, because I'm getting two things: pissed off and curious.

View Quote 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 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!

View Quote What do I tell the next source when the next tough story comes along, huh? 'Hang in with us, you'll be ok maybe'? What got broken here doesn't go back together.

View Quote I'm Lowell Bergmann, I'm from 60 Minutes. You know, you take the "60 Minutes" out of that sentence, nobody returns your phone call.

View Quote I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not 'till right **** now. When I came on this job I came with my word intact. I'm gonna leave with my word intact. **** the rules of the game!

View Quote Mike Wallace: Who are these people?
Lowell Bergman: Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency?

View Quote Jeffrey Wigand: I have to put my family's welfare on the line here, my friend! And what are you putting up? You're putting up words!
Lowell Bergman: Words? While you've been dicking around at some **** company golf tournaments, I've been out in the world, giving my word and backing it up with action.

View Quote Jeffrey Wigand: I'm just a commodity to you, aren't I? I could be anything. Right? Anything worth putting on between commercials.
Lowell Bergman: To a network, probably, we're all commodities. To me? You are not a commodity. What you are is important.

View Quote Mike Wallace: In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.
Lowell Bergman: Like what? Corporate responsibility? What, are we talking celebrity here?
Mike Wallace: I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, et cetera, et cetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah.

View Quote Lowell Bergman: This news division has been vilified by the New York Times, in print, on television, for caving to corporate interests!
Don Hewitt: The New York Times ran a blow-by-blow of what we talked about behind closed doors! You **** us!
Lowell Bergman: NO, YOU **** 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?
Don Hewitt: Mike, you tell him.
Mike Wallace: You **** up, Don.

View Quote Lowell Bergman: I fought for you and I still fight for you!
Jeffrey Wigand: You fought for me? You manipulated me! Into where I am now - staring at the Brown & Williamson building, it's all dark except for the tenth floor. That's the legal department, that's where they **** with my life!
Lowell Bergman: 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.
Jeffrey Wigand: Yeah, guys like you, too.