Blog Post #9

 Whistleblowers

When you first hear the word "whistleblower" you may envision a person blowing a whistle. Not going to lie, when I first searched up the term "whistleblower" it brought me to a whistle I can purchase on Amazon. However, a whistleblower in the mediasphere is much different than someone just blowing a simple whistle. for my EOTO presentation, I was able to dive deeper into what whistleblowers do. Whistleblowers are the most feared people in media and here is why.

Whistleblowing is defined under the law as "disclosing information that you reasonably believe is evidence of a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety". Personally, I would say this is not a positive definition. However, whistleblowers are protected by a network of laws, but the level of protection depends on what they disclose to whom, and how. It may not always be in the whistleblower's interest to work with the press. This means that whistleblowers are protected by what they say to the extent of what they say, in other words depending on what they are leaking to the press. For example, if something is leaked to the press that the government DOES NOT want to get out, then the repercussions outway the protection. 

Whistleblowers must decide who to alert when wrongdoing is discovered. The social science literature focuses on two types of disclosures:

1) those made internally, within the whistleblowers employing organization 

2) those made externally, primarily to government authorities or the media. 

Some examples of whistleblowers include and are not limited to: Employees who report corruption, discrimination, harassment, and fraud. I do not necessarily see a big stereotype for who a whistleblower should be, but If I were to say a specific type of person, it would be a person (male or female) who has a very stern attitude, without bias, to the situation they are reporting on. This type of person cannot be afraid of hate, they need to be a strong person who is working solely for their job. 

Since whistle-blowers speak on the bad things that pertain to the media, they must be protected. therefore, the U.S. came up with the Whistleblower Protection Act, which is a United States federal law that protects federal; whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. 

To summarize all of this, Whistleblowing is defined as an action that is taken by an employee or the former employee to disclose unethical or illegal behavior. the employee can report such behavior to higher management in the same organization which is known as internal whistleblowing or a similar act can be reported to public/ external authority. As whistleblowing exposed the wrongdoing act that is being reported, it may carry a huge risk for the individual who is involved in the act of exposing such malpractices. Whistleblowing policy can be extremely beneficial; for an organization, as it gives confidence in fair practices to their employees, shareholders, society, and other organization who are doing direct/ indirect business with the company. All of this information can be found in numerous researches done that report on the cause and effects of whistleblowing.