Unlike his predecessors in the series, Wigand seemed comfortable in his role as an ethical figurehead.
Maybe it is because he not only has the private knowledge of having done the right thing, but also that he used it to save lives.
Torney’s approach was exemplary. He explained the background, then told the story via a collage of interviews, reconstructions and archive clips. Intriguingly, Wigand doesn’t like to be described as a whistleblower: to him the term implies disloyalty.
We know about this kind of word play in Ireland, where for generations terms such as informer had negative connotations. We are still seeing the results from the garda code of omerta revealed by the Morris tribunal to the efforts by the IRA to justify murder.
The businessman Ben Dunne, who was kidnapped by a republican gang 25 years ago, vividly relived the experience for Ryan Tubridy (The Tubridy Show, RTE R1, Mon-Fri).
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Despite obvious differences, there were parallels with the whistleblowing stories. Tubridy, backed up by a psychologist, was looking for evidence of Stockholm syndrome, where kidnappers and victims bond.
Dunne was frank in describing his interaction with his captors. He realised early on that their main conversational interests were political, particularly the hunger strikes. Because his perspective was so different, he tried to avoid them.
He also described the aftermath and the psychological effect of the kidnapping experience. His erratic behaviour in later years had its roots in the emotional trauma, just as his current aura of watchful ease seems to stem from the realisation he has come through alive.
For Tubridy this was a serious topic, in an area where he was once prone to gaffes. He is now much more focused, judging the thrust of his questions more astutely.
Stories such as these reveal how human psychology is still governed by hormonal surges and fight-or-flight responses. Even in the most acutely modern techno trap, we respond as we have always done. Strangely, some very clever people don’t seem to have grasped this.
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An example is the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, interviewed at length by Cathal Mac Coille on Morning Ireland (RTE R1, Mon-Fri). He made a lot of intelligent points about globalisation, but when he talked about the things people should do he seemed to have a different species in mind, his faith in moral perfectibility echoing the dead dreams of Marxism.
Even when Mac Coille pressed him, pointing out people just aren’t like that, Stiglitz stuck to his idealistic guns. Maybe what he needs to undergo is a life-changing experience — or perhaps a Hollywood biopic.