Billionaire Whistleblower
Whistleblowers are generally underdogs, not top dogs. They speak truth to power. They don’t usually have power. With the democratization
of whistleblowing, though, standards have shifted. The richest
man in the world is now a whistleblower.
This month, Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and owner of The
Washington Post, went public in a blog
post. The National
Enquirer had revealed Bezos sent intimate texts to a woman with whom he was
having an extramarital affair. Bezos
didn’t like having his privacy violated and began investigating who leaked the material. This apparently upset the paper’s publisher,
David Pecker.
Officials from AMI, which owns the Enquirer, got
involved. They told Bezos that more
photos would be published if he didn’t stop his investigation. They also wanted him to say there was nothing
political in the Enquirer’s reporting. Pecker,
you see, has close connections
with Trump, and Trump has
attacked Amazon and The Post, which has published reports critical of the
President.
Bezos responded as a whistleblower might: If in my
position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?
As happened in the #MeToo movement on a much larger scale, others also stepped
forward talking about AMI’s threats to them.
Ronan
Farrow was one, and Huffington Post named others.
Now federal
investigators are reported to be looking into AMI’s and the Enquirer’s
possible extortion. The stakes for
Pecker and AMI are high. Acts of extortion could violate the company’s
immunity agreement over hush money paid to AMI by Trump’s attorney Michael
Cohen.
Like other whistleblowers, Bezos is principled. He defends his privacy, and he stands up to scumbags. Unlike the rest of us, he has a lot of money
to devote to his project. He asked three
attorneys to review his blog post. He
engaged bodyguard-to-the-stars Gavin
de Becker to help him. Also unlike
the rest of us, he doesn’t have a big piece of his wealth at stake in the fight.
It’s puzzling why anyone blows the whistle on what we think
is wrongdoing. Especially a guy who has $112
billion to play with.
Maybe something like an existential crisis is in play. Challenges to the essential roles we play set
us off. You can see hints of that in my
case. At HomeFirst Services, I was increasingly
critical of its CEO Jenny Niklaus’s
leadership. The company was on a
downward financial slide, and as CFO I was responsible. You might read it in stories of other
whistleblowers. Environmental scientist Joel
Clement couldn’t work for the Trump administration after it called climate
change a hoax. It was impossible for elementary
school principal Sarah
Lynch to do her job when district spending provided inadequate safety
staffing for her school.
In these cases, the company, government, or school district want
to go their ways and not the ones we propose.
Rather than simply
yield, we resist.
In Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground[1],
the narrator describes an officer who regularly strides down Nevsky Prospekt in
St. Petersburg. Imperious, he expects
others to move from his path. Having
always to back down angered our narrator.
What rule says this officer must always get to humiliate the others, he
asked. Why must I always be the
martyr? The officer never even notices me
as I step aside.
Our hero made plans.
He took an advance on his salary to buy fancy new clothes. He will be impressive. Walking along Nevsky, he will be powerful. This time he will not step aside. The officer approaches. Our hero stands his ground. But the officer knocks him away like a ball
and continues down the avenue.
But Bezos is no sniveling runt. He is an officer used to having his way. He is used to receiving
breaks, not giving them.
In this light, the National Enquirer is the
whistleblower. The Enquirer is the one
who disclosed wrongdoing – the extramarital kind. Like whistleblowers everywhere, it exercised
its right of free speech. Standing up to
Bezos’ screed, it fervently
defended its lawful disclosure of the texts.
Still. raising a sleazy, supermarket tabloid to whistleblower
status seems wrong, too. The Enquirer is
no Washington Post. Unless you buy that free
speech means more to it than business craft.
Likewise, Bezos’ defense of privacy rights could be just a
maneuver. Whatever the game, he expects
to have his way no less than Dostoyevsky’s officer.
Our claim to being whistleblowers is always contested. Despite my many complaints,
HomeFirst denied I
was one and the
State agreed. Even we can find our ventures
hard to justify after the sacrifices we make.
While I'm sure the organizations that treat us roughly are scumbags, I admit
the underground narrator is a little crazy.
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