Whistleblowers, including Snowden,
Manning, Ellsberg,
and Wigand,
have been praised
as heroes or damned as traitors. Even
when a whistleblower denies any intent to be a hero,
her story can still be filled with high ethical values, tenacity, and courage
that lead others to call
her a hero.
Joseph Campbell’s description of the hero’s journey (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) is
far different from the whistleblower’s journey:
A hero ventures forth
from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous
forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back
from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow
man.
In contrast, the whistleblower’s journey is typically
mundane and covers her usual job territory.
Her opponents are petty bureaucrats who hope to maintain power in their
small worlds through the conventional corporate techniques. The wrong is usually, but not always,
trivial, not endangering the lives of many.
Far from unique, the whistleblower is one of millions, and the
retaliations that she suffers are simply variations on what others in similar
situations have suffered. That commonness
and the lack of intrinsic interest in the wrong helps explain the indifference
of others to her problems. The whistleblower’s
story extends for years, beyond the attention of others. She may abandon the project, but if she does
not, it will be forgotten by those who might initially have been concerned. Unlike Campbell’s hero, the whistleblower
seldom succeeds.
Heroic status also endangers the whistleblower: she is
inflated and separated from others. As a
hero, she need not closely inspect her contentions, evaluate and question her motivations. The presumed nobility of her act diverts
attention from her less attractive motivations, and she becomes less than fully human
as a result.
The sense of one’s honor and heroism encourages some whistleblowers
to persist in the project when perhaps they should not – because their case is
not so strong or the expected retaliation against them and their families will
be too painful. They may stay too long in
the company or identify themselves too soon; they may put too much faith in
their invincibility or in official promises of protection by the company and the
state. Particularly when high stakes are
involved, such as in qui tam cases,
they may be played by investigators seeking more evidence necessary to achieve
victory over evil.
Expecting whistleblowers to be heroes sets the bar entirely too
high for those considering whether to disclose a wrong. It puts them on a level near those who saved
Jews from murder by Nazis. But the
wrongs they disclose and their personal risks are never that great. By raising the standard so high, a witness to
quotidian wrongs is able to excuse his silence by confessing that he is no hero. Whistleblowing feels unnecessary to his life;
his failure to speak out can be forgotten, he believes.
For wrongdoers, the expectation of heroism opens a defense. They point out that the whistleblower is not
great or noble and does not meet the definition of heroic. They can that the wrong was never serious
enough to warrant heroic action. They divert
attention away from the pedestrian issue at hand: that a wrong was done, it was
concealed, and the whistleblower was punished for having revealed it. By their artifices, the whistleblowing is
diminished.
Outsiders expect the heroic whistleblower to be strong and
not to yield; she should only succeed if she deserves respect. She is a hero or traitor rather than an
ordinary person making a routine choice in her life. Those sympathetic to her goals may avoid
considering the negative impulses involved – her psychological issues and
imperfect performances. Those who are unsympathetic discount her positive
impulses.
Academics demand that the whistleblower be sure that her facts are right and her motives pure. Her approach must be so honorable that the wrongdoer
is told of the violation before she discloses it externally. On the other hand, because wrongdoers are not
expected to be heroic, a variety of explanations
defend the innocence of their misdeeds.
“Whistleblower as hero” enables all sides to close their
eyes to the reality of the situation. Whistleblowing, like other forms of dissent, becomes
exceptional rather than essential to daily life.
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