Whistleblowing Should be Protected

 One of my fellow classmates, CJ Vagnone, wrote his own blogpost about whistleblowers. I am going to review some of the topics that he covered here, but I strongly suggest reading the original. In Vagnone’s post, he describes the importance of whistleblowers and why they should be kept safe. 

A whistleblower is a specific person in a company or a government that leaks information to the public to give insight of wrongdoing or secrets. Whistleblowers are meant to keep the integrity and honesty of large corporations such as Google and Facebook, as well as companies across the world. For example, Julian Assange was a whistleblower that released private information that the United States government was hiding. This information made the United States look really bad, yet it was important for citizens to understand that there were innocent people being harmed in other countries, even Americans. The United States did what they could to silence Julian Assange and he was arrested after fleeing the country. At this time he is in a prison in London.

Julian Assange

At first glance, whistleblowing might seem scary. To be fair, it is a risky job and there is a lot of uncomfort to speak out against wrongdoing when you are surrounded by it. As Vagnone stated, whistleblowing is usually protected and not illegal. There are supposed to be laws put in place such as the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. This, of course, is because people deserve to have knowledge of the secrets being kept against citizens and those who speak out should have the freedom to do so. In Julian Assange’s case, he should not be in trouble legally and there is a major issue that he is in prison.

Whistleblowers have been known to help before. After all, that is how Nixon was impeached. Watergate was information that was leaked about Nixon covering up illegal activities. The health problems behind using nicotine and tobacco were also information that was leaked to the public. There are plenty of reasons that whistleblowers are and should be protected. So for the safety of everyone, we should work to protect whistleblowers.