Mediasphere

Whistleblower

• A whistleblower is someone who purposely exposes information or activity that is considered illegal or not right within a public or private organization
• Internal whistleblowing – “Internal whistleblowing is, as one might expect from its name, the act of reporting misconduct to someone else within the same organization”
• External whistleblowing – “External whistleblowing, on the other hand, is the reporting of misconduct to someone outside of the organization, such as to law enforcement and/or the media”
• There is a Whistleblower Protection Act that protects federal employees from retaliation from the government
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  One example is, during the Watergate tapes the infamous Mark Felt gave information to the press to exploit the story to Washington Post.
• Another example is, Daniel Ellsberg who was an employee of the state department in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers. These papers contained a secret document referring to how the U.S. came to fight the Vietnam War.
• Famous Whistleblowers today include, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange
• Many people can find whistleblowers helpful, but most face many federal conseqeunces