Analysis Of Whistleblowing And Rational Loyalty

Whistleblowing is a problem most companies, countries or people in general fear because of the general backlash that usually follows them sometimes for years. There are many occasions especially in recent years where a whistleblowing case has made the evening news and created havoc not only for the party at fault, but the person doing the whistleblowing as well as the innocent bystanders. But sometimes you have to wonder are there really innocent bystanders. For the case in this section that I chose to investigate, I chose to talk about the most recent scandal involving the email scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton. The offending party has never been truly identified as of yet but was made known to all through the website wiki-leaks. While …show more content…
Our readings in class have suggested that there are two types of responses to whistleblowing. You are either a loyal person to your business or country or wherever you are currently employed or you are a disloyal person. But this is far from the truth. In the article, Whistle Blowing and Rational Loyalty, written by authors: Wim Vandekerckhove and M. S. Ronald Commers, the notion of loyalty to one entity is broken down into multiple categories. The argument in the article is that there is no real loyalty to a company because a company is not an individual person. A company is a group or organization that has values and obligations to the public and that is where the true value of loyalty lies. This notion would allow a person to be loyal to their values and beliefs while also remaining loyal to the public and in a sense, remaining loyal to their company or organization. The reason you are able to remain loyal to their company while whistleblowing is because you are remaining loyal to the values your company or organization is founded upon. In the case mentioned above, wiki-leaks is an …show more content…
Metaethics is the ethical value in which each individual has to determine for themselves what is right and what is wrong for each situation. For example, the idea to release the fact that a high ranking official with very sensitive information was using this information on a private non-secured (or at least not as secured as government regulated computers are) might have seen right to the individual at the time but could prove to be wrong in the eyes of society. Whistleblowers in general face backlash by the media and in turn the people who only hear the side that the media portrays. Many times, the full story is never known to the general public unless there is criminal activity involved and even then, you are never fully sure of what is the complete story. In this case, bringing to light the email server issue might have been the right idea but only of done to an agency such as the FBI for investigation and the CIA or NSA because of possible data breeches from their departments. The media should never have been involved in the release of the email server issues, especially in light of the fact that the person in charge of this server was a leading candidate for President of the United States in an upcoming election. The email server was an issue that should have been dealt with in private and the cards could have fallen