It followed up on the subject of its 2009 film The Informant! by hosting what it described as a "whistleblower all-star event" last Friday, which was streamed live around the world. The Informant! is a dark comedy about Mark Whitacre, an employee who blew the whistle on Archer Daniels Midland's price-fixing tactics in the early 1990s.
The event featured a panel of some of the most famous whistleblowers in history, including, among others, Colleen Rowely, an agent who exposed mishandling of information within the FBI, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the famous Pentagon Papers, Cathy Harris, who revealed racial profiling within the U.S. Customs Agency, and most famously, Frank Serpico (subject of the 1973 Al Pacino film Serpico) who exposed police corruption.
The panel is really worth seeing. Some of the most powerful moments involved Cathy Harris, who emotionally described how black foreign women in the international Miami and Atlanta airports were racially profiled, strip-searched, humiliated, and sometimes handcuffed to hospital beds for up to four days.
Also moving was Serpico's description of being shot in the face by his fellow police officers, who allegedly left him for dead. "I believe that everybody wants to do the right thing," he says. "But when you fail in doing so, there is something in your nature that has to deny it."
The panel incorporated a positive note by reflecting on the vindication whistleblowers can feel when positive change comes from their actions, even though many initially experience sacrifice, retaliation, and isolation as a result.
Watch the event now:
Watch live streaming video from theinformant at livestream.com
To learn more about The Informant!, which got great reviews, visit the Warner Brother's site.
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