Whistleblowers
When I first picked whistleblowers for my second EOTO project, I thought it would be about snitches or rats and how they try to screw over their companies for money. After doing some research I found out it was so much more. Whistleblowers are not the bad guys in this situation but they are actually trying to get rid of illegal activities within their companies. The definition of a whistleblower is, is someone who exposes a person or company who is doing illegal activities. The word whistleblower comes from the 19th century and when law enforcement would use whistles to inform other law enforcement where criminals are.
83% of whistleblowers tried to go to their higher-ups but nothing was done about the problem. What this tells me that the whistleblowers are actually in the right, they were just trying to make their companies better but were overlooked so they had to go to the media or the cops. Whistleblowing is a difficult lifestyle because only 20% of whistleblowers actually make a difference and stop illegal activities. In private institutions, there is a high chance that you will be fired if you whistleblow and there are no laws to protect the whistleblowers from not getting in trouble. If the whistleblower works for the government there is a law that protects them from getting fired or getting a pay cut. The law is called The Whistleblower Protection Law of 1989, this protects anyone that exposes fraud or corruption within the American government and they protect from demotions or pay cuts.
There are many examples of whistleblowers in the world but I found two that affected our lives and changed the way Americans looked at their country.
The first one is Daniel Ellsburg, Daniel was the one to tell the American people about the pentagon papers. These papers showed America's increasing involvement in Vietnam, it showed the people that America actually had tons more troops in Vietnam than people thought we did. It was also shown that America was also bombing North Vietnam without the people's knowledge. This example shows that whistleblowers are more than snitches and that helps exposes the problem in the government.
(Daniel Ellsburg)
The second example of a good whistleblower is Edward Snowden. Endward changed the was use Amerian live today and have changed things for the good. Edward Snowden was the one to leak government papers saying that the NSA was gathering illegal information on the American people. Snowden was an employee of the CIA when he whistleblew. He also did not want to become famous from this and did not want the attention, he just wanted to help the American people. Even though he did not want the fame Edward Snowden had two movies about him, the first one is called Snowden and he was played by Joseph-Gorden Levitt. The other one is called Fifth Estate and he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
(Edward Snowden)
In conclusion, Whistleblowers are not just people who snitch on their companies but are really people trying to change the world for the better.
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