Perspective: Five myths about whistleblowers
By Dana Gold Dana Gold is senior counsel and director of education for the Government Accountability Project, a non-profit law organization that promotes government and corporate accountability through litigating whistleblower cases, publicizing whistleblowers’ disclosures and developing legal reforms.
The overwhelming majority of employees who see problems want to blow the whistle internally first. Understanding this can — and should — encourage employers to respond appropriately when workers report problems, protecting them from reprisal and investigating and addressing their disclosures thoroughly. Similarly, employees who understand that they are in fact whistleblowers when they raise concerns inside the workplace will be better prepared to navigate their rights, risks and options.
In reality, most whistleblowers are motivated by a deep sense of loyalty to their employers and are exercising both a high degree of professional ethics and a belief that their employers will address the problem. While many employees who witness wrongdoing in the workplace stay silent, fearing reprisal or futility, those who do raise concerns — and again, most do so internally first — demonstrate faith that their employers are committed to compliance and that they can make a difference.
Even though protections for intelligence community whistleblowers are weak and dictate how those employees must report concerns, Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s unconstitutional mass collection of telephone metadata, and Reality Winner’s disclosures about Russian efforts to hack state elections as the Trump campaign was denying Russian involvement, clearly meet this standard of significance.
Efforts like these are needed, but reporting serious wrongdoing is risky business, and employees who believe this myth may be inadvertently hurt in the course of disclosing what they have witnessed.
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