Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.

Civics 101 host Nick Capodice joins Julia this week to talk about whistleblowers, what they are and if they have any protection after revealing information.

Transcript

Let's start with the basics. What is a governmental whistleblower?

Well simply put, a whistleblower is someone who reveals information to the public that is in the public's interest. This information exposes bad things happening in the government, things that are not good for our nation, like fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and most importantly, the violation of laws.

I want to make a very important distinction here. A whistleblower is not the same thing as a leaker. The government itself is the biggest leaker that there is. Leaks are often strategically used by the government to get something to make it look better. Or quite often, the government purposefully leaks something to test out an idea to see the public or the press's reaction before they actually do it.

But whistleblowers are people doing this without the government's approval, usually expressly against the wishes of the government. And what tends to happen after somebody blows a whistle is that the whistleblower takes the fall. Personal information about them is revealed. Possible reasons are given for why they blew the whistle in the first place. And what is not at the center of...

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