We used to have
whistleblowers in the place where I worked.
Everywhere has them. Except that
we used call them ‘hangmen’. But the
world seems to have moved on from then and suddenly they are being promoted as
moral heroes.
Now let me say I am not
speaking of any specific case, for really I don’t know very much about the
various examples in the public eye at the moment. All I know about them is what I read in the
newspaper headlines, which is generally all I read of any article. But I am fascinated by the logic of the
situation and where it seems likely to lead.
There will always be
situations where there is a compelling need to speak up. But the first thing to be said is that there
are ways of doing this that do not involve one having to step into the
spotlight. Also there are cases that
involve the risk of it nonetheless happening.
There is the famous
case of Kurt Gerstein, an Obersturmbannführer (equivalent of a
Lieutenant-Colonel) in the SS, who sought to inform the world via the Swedish
diplomatic service and the Vatican and various other channels about the
extermination of the Jews. He tried to
do so privately, because had he been caught he would have been killed. Nonetheless he felt morally compelled to take
that chance.
The heroic essence of
his action is that in doing it he was putting his neck on the line, there was
no reward or praise or enhanced public profile for him—certainly not in wartime
Germany. And that is the essence of true
‘whistleblowing’—it has to involve a potential cost that one is nonetheless
prepared to risk.
If ‘whistleblowing’ is
made too easy then every sneak in the country can reinvent himself as a whistleblower,
and things that were done formerly behind the secrecy of closed doors can now
be done in the full light of day, and one can expect to be rewarded and praised
and lionised for it, too.
The idea that people
who inform in this way (I hate using the word ‘whistleblower’; I think it is a
ridiculous term) should not be negatively affected in the slightest by their
actions is to devalue the moral value of ‘whistleblowing’. The seriousness or otherwise of the matter
being reported can be calculated purely to the extent that people are prepared
to risk their employment or promotion prospects or the disapproval of their
fellow workers, or even of the world, in order to make it known. If there is no such risk involved then it
cannot be a matter of any great importance.
Remove this conditional
and the long-term consequence is less likely to be ‘openness’ than chaos.
