An insider is a member of any group of people of limited number and generally restricted access. The term is used in the context of secret, privileged, hidden or otherwise esoteric information or knowledge: an insider is a "member of the gang" and as such knows things only people in the gang know.

In our complicated and information-rich world, the concept of insider knowledge is popular and pervasive, as a source of direct and useful guidance. In a given situation, an insider is contrasted with an outside expert: the expert can provide an in-depth theoretical analysis that should lead to a practical opinion, while an insider has firsthand, material knowledge. Insider information may be thought of as more accurate and valuable than expert opinion.

Roles

In criminal and social justice, whistle-blowing and leaks are seen as (often heroic) efforts of individual insiders to right wrongs by making secret information public, usually in David and Goliath situations (e.g. by revealing transgressions of governments, large corporations or other powerful organizations). When whistle-blowers are cultivated by outside forces, they are known as informants and informers.

In finance, insider trading on the stock market is widely thought of as a means of rapidly increasing wealth for the privileged few who have access to private business information. This is at times perceived as profiting unfairly at the expense of others. Some forms of insider trading are illegal.

In everyday life, insider knowledge is seen as a source of practical information that is contrary to the standard or official advice, delivered in the form of tips from insiders in a wide range of industries. Industry insiders tell outsiders what really goes on behind the scenes, so that they can take advantage of that knowledge. Related to this is personal insider access, where advantageous info can be gained through "knowing someone" ("I'll find out what really goes on from my brother the cop, or my aunt the judge, or my friend who works in accounting").

In business, tips take the form of insider knowledge used by individuals and companies, often away from the view of the public. Jobs and contracts, while openly advertised, in fact go to people based on exchanges of various inside info between key parties. Here, the insider channels can themselves be revealed to a wider audience by other insiders.

A variation of this is the insider-versus-expert authority conflict, where the uncredentaled, "non-expert" insider has a better functional knowledge of a situation, based on "how things really work", than the outside experts, whose expertise is often embodied in a set of rules. For example, there is the farmer who sees folly in new agricultural regulations created by a team of government experts without firsthand farming experience. Or the office staff that keeps a business running smoothly by unofficially ignoring and working around impractical rules devised by management consultants.

In the media, investigative reports, exposés and inside stories are popular genres that usually rely on insiders speaking out, with results ranging from the trivial to the monumentally whistle-blowing.

Definitions

Active participation is a defining factor: being a witness alone does not make a person an insider. An insider is usually one who is privy to, not simply facts and procedures, but also the day-to-day working relationships and dynamics of people in a group.

Underlying the concept of the insider is a widespread belief, and fact, that in most human social activities, there are two simultaneous, intertwined systems or processes at work: the "way things seem" and the "way they really are". In any one situation, the way things seem may or may not actually be how things work ''most'' of the time, but there is always some significant deviation, usually through the clandestine activity of small numbers of individuals within the larger group. Revealing these activities is the role of the insider.

In this way, an insider comes into existence only on or near the act of revealing what they know to an outside party. The majority of people have some area of insider knowledge, but they only become insiders when tapped for that information.

In law, a formal value is assigned to insider knowledge when it is cited to qualify a person as an expert witness. It is also recognized in intelligence and law enforcement, when insiders are deliberately created in the form of deep cover spies and undercover officers, to obtain knowledge not available through surveillance and investigation.

Two broad classes of insider are commonly recognized: those who are principal players in closely-knit groups with specific objectives (e.g. the upper management of a corporation; members of a secret society), and participants in a general area of endeavour, such as a particular industry or profession, a company, or a government department (e.g. a lawyer, an employee of XYZ Inc., a postal worker).

Media

See also

References

Category:Social groups

Anthony Marcus Sanders (born March 2, 1974 in Tucson, Arizona) is a former outfielder in Major League Baseball. Sanders spent parts of three seasons in the majors with the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners, along with part of the 2001 season with the Yokohama BayStars in Japan. As a member of the United States national baseball team, Sanders won a gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics. He is currently the hitting coach for the Tri-City Dust Devils.

In , Sanders' wife was killed in a skiing accident.

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Amy M. Holmes (born in 1973 in Lusaka, Zambia) is a news anchor on Glenn Beck's GBTV. She formerly was an independent political contributor for CNN and has appeared on Fox News. She has also appeared on ''Real Time with Bill Maher'' several times. Holmes graduated from Princeton University with a BA in economics in 1994. She is an independent conservative.

Biography

She has co-hosted ''The View'' and co-hosted Fox News' ''Glenn Beck'' while Beck was on the road with his "Unelectable" show. She has also appeared on the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. She was an anchor of a morning radio program syndicated by the Washington Times newspaper called "America's Morning News". She has appeared with Cenk Uygur on MSNBC Live.

After working for several years for Independent Women's Forum, began to write Senate floor statements for Bill Frist, a two-term United States Senator from Tennessee and the Republican Majority Leader from 2003 until 2006.

{{as of |2011|8 |alt=Currently}} Holmes is employed by Glenn Beck to be the anchor of the news desk – branded ''The Blaze'' – of Beck's media outlet GBTV. Her first assignment will be to cover the rally in Israel for the newly established media outlet.

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Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a finance show on Yahoo.

Blodget received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and began his career as a freelance journalist and was a proofreader for ''Harper's Magazine''. In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research. In October 1998, he predicted that Amazon.com's stock price would hit a pre-split price of $400 (which it did a month later, gaining 128%).

This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a position at Merrill Lynch. Blodget's influence continued to increase, and, in 2000, he was voted the No. 1 Internet/eCommerce analyst on Wall Street by Institutional Investor, Greenwich Associates, and TheStreet.com. In early 2000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to lose most of it in the years that followed. In 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.

Fraud allegation and settlement

Writing

Blodget's later articles for the magazine have focused on the return-limiting actions of individual investors, including listening to analysts and the financial media, and relying on active management such as mutual and hedge funds. Blodget now recommends low fee index investing to capture the broad return, while focusing on reduced portfolio turnover to minimize taxes. His ''Slate'' articles about investing carry a seven-paragraph disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

He published ''The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing'' in January 2007.

Current career – Internet broadcaster

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