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Dear reader,
Did you know that the very idea of “whistleblowing” had to wait hundreds of years to get a decent name? IMHO, this fact might be the most perfect metaphor for how society has historically treated those brave enough to speak truth to power. For centuries, these moral daredevils were saddled with sorry-sounding terms like snitch, turncoat, stool pigeon, leaker, tipster, dissenter, defector, gadfly, muckraker, canary, bell-ringer, Cassandra (really?), rat, and more.
These charming epithets essentially painted them as society’s least favourite. The people risking everything to protect us from corruption were linguistically lumped together with playground tattletales and mob informants. It was like we created a bizarre social contract where we could simultaneously benefit from whistleblowers’ courage while refusing to acknowledge their importance.
The linguistic rehabilitation of whistleblowing didn’t really take off until the 1970s, when an American consumer advocate, Ralph Nader, decided that people exposing corruption deserved better PR. He championed the term “whistleblower”, drawing on the positive imagery of referees who blow whistles to stop foul play.
The term “whistleblower” began with actual, physical whistles. In the 19th century, and often today as well in small towns and villages, police officers would blow their whistle to sound the alert on crimes in progress. Similarly, sports referees use whistles to halt play when rules are...
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