Week 13

 Whistleblowers

Summary

For this blogpost, I am going to to discuss what I learned from Julia Mays' presentation on whistleblowers. Before her presentation, the only time I heard the term "whistleblower" was in reference to Edward Snowden, who released the information about the government illegally spying on American citizens. Whistleblowers are necessary in our society, especially today, to expose the corruption of governments/corporations who are abusing their employees, exploiting deals, or conducting illegal activities (like surveillance), on its consumers/people. What I found particularly interesting about the negatives of a whistleblower is that is revolves around the retaliation from companies. As Julia points out, whistleblowers "will most likely lose their job and other companies may be hesitant to hire that person due to their loyalty,". This fact is sadly what deters people from exposing corruption since the person knows that they will lose their livelihood. Even worse, there may even be threats of violence against the person, their family, or anyone that they love. Despite the fact that there are laws in place to prevent retaliation, it does not stop companies from taking out some form of revenge or not hiring a person due to their question of loyalty to the company.

Going Further

Another aspect of whistleblowing Julia expands upon that I found interesting was the concept that whistleblowing is only good if the person is doing it for society, and not for personal gain. According to the NWA, a whistleblower is someone that, "someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, or dangers to public health and safety to someone who is in the position to rectify the wrongdoing," (NWA). Nowhere on this site does it talk about personal gain, since even if the person is doing it for selfish intentions, the public is still benefitting from the knowledge gained. Personally, I believe humans are inherently selfish, and that every selfless action has a selfish intention. Does that mean the action is bad? Not at all. In most circumstances, the gain of money or fame that comes from whistleblowing does not equate to the crucial exposure of corruption within a government or corporation. Even if "greed" is the motivator for exposing a specific financial wrong-doing, the public still will gain more than the whistleblower. In fact, I would argue that whistleblowers should be rewarded for their services, instead of being forced to worry if they will have a job again; if they can provide for those that they love. In fact, the SEC awards millions of dollars to people that blow the whistle, which will create incentive for people to expose major corruption in the government/corporation. All in all, there is no "bad" form of whistleblowing in my opinion. Sure, there are greedy individuals that will think more about the personal gather rather than how society will benefit, but that does not hinder the knowledge given to the public or the severity of the corruption they are exposing.