Do’s and Don’t’s When Working with Whistleblowers in the Digital Age

4:30PM Aug 25, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

whistleblowers

work

journalist

reporters

story

felt

signals

rachel

people

talk

cigna

legal jeopardy

support

company

rebecca

job

sources

change

day

issue

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we're just talking about our favorite journals and conferences right now. While we're waiting for everyone else to get here when

guys, Mike

All right. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Jack Lew, thank you so much for coming here today to our panel on the do's and don'ts when working with whistleblowers in the digital age. Again, I'm duck I'm one of the program directors in Knight Foundation. Working on our journalism team. I also have the honor and the privilege of being one of the board members for the signals network. And and really proud of the great work that they've been doing and working with whistleblowers as well. I'm really happy to introduce Rebecca Petrus here, Ally Dirks and Wendell Potter at the end there who are going to be joining me as for this panel today. All right. The thing I want to get started with first is to help clarify some terms for everyone. What and I'm gonna turn this to Rebecca here. Rebecca many of the people in this room are journalists. They work with sources, what makes a whistleblower unique and different when you're thinking about them versus sources.

Thank you for that duck. And thank you for your support of the sickness network. Well, it's a very good question and it has a fuzzy answer. So typically, a whistleblower is defined by the law in a more strict way than we define a whistleblower when working with a journalist. A journalist working with Whistler is usually working with that person for an extended period of time. The information that they are providing is public interest information. So, it has a broad implication. And it is very, very much the case that the the reporting for the story is drawn a lot from whatever the whistleblower information is, is it's provided. So that's kind of the like fuzzy answer to that. In many ways, we sometimes equate source with whistleblower. But one thing that we would not consider a whistleblower would be someone who is like a subject of a story, who also could have legal Jeopardy but isn't really considered a whistleblower. It is true, however, that it was a blog can be anonymous or public. And we work with both both anonymous and public.

And when we say we want to give you a chance to explain what that is, on the next slide here, the signals network, can you just give us a bit of context about what the signals network does? And how you work whistleblowers and reporters?

Sure. Thank you. Yes, so we work very primarily with journalists. We do work with government bodies as well, but our main objective is to help the journalist with the reporting of their story when it involves a whistleblower. We always start with the whistleblower first. So our concern is that person, that person who has provided information to a journalist to help them write a story that holds power to account quite honestly, we do that through a sort of end to end approach. So we want to be working with that whistleblower as soon as possible. They very often are right are on a very lonely journey. You will hear about that in a moment. They are often in a situation where they only have the journalist and perhaps one other person in their life, who they can talk to and they don't know what kind of Jeopardy or legal or security or traumatic issues they are, they may face very, very, very much the case that the whistleblowers journey does not end when that story is published. A lot of times it starts really when the story is published, and goes on for years. So we provide a wide range of services both for the whistleblower everything from psychosocial support, to security, both virtual and physical, to legal help, and also just public communications support.

And I think, hearing what Rebecca says in terms of the services that the signal server provides to whistleblowers is one of the reasons why Knight Foundation is really proud to support them and in terms of this panel, what we'd like to discuss today, really centering around the question of what do we owe each other? What do we owe each other as reporters as sources as human beings, and how does that affect the relationships that we have with each other and how do we do that in a way that treats everyone equitably? And I want to start with talking to some actual whistleblowers down to the far end. They're an ally. I'll start with you because I think for both of you what I love is to help center your stories in terms of I think I've heard you describe it as that moment. The moment when you decided this was the time for me to tell this story that used to be a secret, and to put it out and to start talking to journalists about it. Can you tell us what led to that moment for you?

Oh, gosh, so how my journey started initially was I was working in Washington DC for a white shoe law firm, very prestigious, very elite. I was one of the lower level grunt attorneys you might say my it was my job to sift through mountains of paper. And as part of that I was assigned to the firm's internal investigation of CBS and their chief executive Les Moonves who had been accused of sexual misconduct, harassment. And other related behavior. And in my position, reviewing 1000s and 1000s of emails and documents, I became really disturbed by the things I was reading and over time, it accumulated and accumulated. And I ended up feeding the information that upset me so much to Rachel Abrams at the New York Times, and she and a couple of co authors published a series of stories about misconduct and a whole bunch of things that were rotten at CBS. And the fallout for me was swift. I got my law license suspended, deservedly so, because attorneys are bound by attorney client privilege, regardless of whether it would be in the public interest to break that. So I committed a serious ethical violation as an attorney and was deservedly punished for it. The fallout for CBS and for the actresses who were harmed, took a little bit longer to play out. But part of what has made my story kind of difficult or complicated to tell is that I didn't have a light bulb moment it was more like death by 1000 cuts. So it's hard to say exactly when a switch flipped, it was more like just I felt more and more weighed down by the the awfulness of what I was reading and what had been happening to people. And now I'm here. I was, I was silent and anonymous for over four years, and in May, The Times offered me the opportunity to become public and tell my story in an episode of The Daily that was released mid May. So this is the first thing I've done since that came out, and I'm now sort of navigating the waters of what it's like to go from having to keep everything very, very secret to now speaking to people in public, so,

thank you, Ali. And I highly recommend if you're interested in more Valley story than what we can get into today is to listen to the daily podcast. I think it was May 18. Just to listen more, and it's just a really moving one. Wendell, can you tell us about the moment when you decided to take your stand literally?

Well, yeah, there were there were different reasons why I left my job at Cigna, which, by the way, was at the time headquartered, just a couple blocks from here, a few blocks, and 16th and Chestnut I was the company's chief spokesman. I was Vice President of Corporate Communications. And in a minute I'll talk about some of the things that led to my decision to leave the company but I didn't have any intention of being a whistleblower. When I left. Several months later, Congress was beginning to bait in what became the Affordable Care Act. Before I left Cigna, I was part of an effort to try to develop a strategy in Washington to try to make sure that legislation never passed. And I didn't want to be a part of that I'd done that kind of work in the past and I just didn't have it me to do it again. I was watching MSNBC was on and a segment came on Tamron Hall was was hosting it and she was interviewing a congressman from Tennessee and I'm from Tennessee. I knew this congressman. And during the interview, she was asking him what he thought about the effort to reform the health care system, the health insurance, business, in particular, what he thought about the problem with the people who were uninsured at that time, there were about 50 million Americans who didn't have health insurance. And he said, Well, you know what? A lot of those folks are that way by choice. They've just decided to go nekkid and I just it just even telling this I can almost remember how I felt. I was so upset because he was using language that I had written as talking points for our lobbyists to use in Washington to get to members of Congress like this guy. And here he was trying to influence the debate influence the narrative in Washington about health care reform, and I said, I can't just stay on the sidelines and just let that happen. So it was that one thing that kind of triggered me that made me determined to figure out some way to make a difference. I've sometimes said what I do for a living now, or what I do is, in a sense, trying to make amends for a lot of what I used to do. When I was in my corporate job and I had been a journalist and my first career I'd gone into PR work and I ultimately decided I had spent 20 years working undercover for big insurance companies and I might have an opportunity to do something that almost no one ever gets a chance to do. And that is to go back into journalism in some way or at least to try to tell the truth. And that was that was what pushed me to do it. I began to reach out to people in Washington who I knew were advocates for reform that led one introduction to another ultimately to the staff at the Senate Commerce Committee, and they invited me to testify and I did do that on June the 24th of 2009. And I knew it was going to be a day that changed my life. But it was a media report. Of me hearing somebody using my old talking points. And I just felt I had an obligation to try to call that out. And to help advocates understand, here's what my old industry is going to do to try to kill healthcare reform once again.

So we're obviously at a Journalism Conference, bunch of reporters in the room and so I just want to hear ally what why don't you tell us about how you decided to work with Rachel and tell us about the relationship with her in terms of how did you reach out to her how did you start telling her that this is something you want to do and just outline a bit more about how that relationship grew?

Sure. Initially, what prompted me to contact the times in the first place, and I cringe thinking about this in retrospect, but I had read an article that they published about how some of the witnesses in the investigation I doubted the impartiality or the integrity of the investigation, and I felt well that's not fair. I'm working on this investigation. Everybody on on our team is working really hard to get to the truth. That's not fair. So I sent in a message to their their tip jar, to say, you know, I know it's not normal for attorneys to reach out, but I I think it's important that you know that the people at the firm who are working on this are doing a good job and their hearts are in it. And it's unfair to categorize, you know, what they're doing is lacking integrity.

And did you do that anonymously? No, okay. Okay.

And so the, that tip was filtered down, was given to Rachel Abrams by the times, and she reached out to me and we just begin talking about what I was seeing what I might be willing to do. And we worked very closely together very intensely for a fairly short, condensed period of time. And the thing that complicated our relationship the most, was that I was caught by the law firm in part because of details that were published in the story. And I say this with two caveats. One, that's my memory of it. And I'm not 100% confident in that only because you can only attend a trial so many times and see someone swear on their child's life that the guy was wearing a blue shirt and you see video evidence that it's read. So I know that the fallibility of human memory is the thing. And it's also possible the law firm may have told me that so that I would resent Rachel, but the details that were published were something like a page count and a word count of the most important document that I fed to her, give her documents the information from the document. And it was used as a you know, like an authentication or a vetting mechanism. The details were included, I think so it would be clear that this wasn't just some nebulous thing in the ether. There was an actual report that said the investigation was going to go in a drawer so that because that's what the board wanted to happen. So that was difficult. The fact that initially I felt burned because of what she wrote. And we didn't speak for quite a long time after that. The other thing that made it really difficult was that she got a book deal and a Pulitzer Prize out of it and I lost my career. I lost everything. So the divergence in our paths was so dramatic that it made it really hard to, to feel to feel good about what I did. I think in some ways my my narrative as a whistleblower is complicated or unsatisfying, because I, I don't particularly feel brave or proud. I still deal with a lot of shame and a lot of guilt and wrestling with that alone and secret, while watching her star ascend basically was really, really hard. But to her credit, we had some very difficult, messy therapeutic conversations about what the relationship between a reporter and a source should be. My husband always reminded me while all of this was happening, Ally Rachel is not your friend. You're her source. She's not your friend. She's not your friend. And it was so hard for me to keep that separate because other than my husband, she was the only person I had to talk about this with so despite the fact that she said everything that she was obligated to like, there's no pressure. I can't, can't make this decision for you. You should really think about the consequences before you take actions and she gave me all the caveats. You're supposed to give. And then that didn't it didn't prevent me from bonding with her in a way that was really complicated and difficult.

Um, again, only if you're comfortable sharing. You said you didn't speak with her for a while. What what initiated you to restart that relationship or whoever initiated restarting the relationship

she would every now and then send me a message on signal just to say hey, wanted to check in how you're doing and I ignored all of them. I think it was. I had start when I saw reports about other litigation that resulted from the stories there was a shareholder lawsuit. The other other corporate fallout from that resurfaced in the news a little bit and that made me think, Well, maybe it's time but then I still hesitated. It was honestly just the the pressure and the misery of being so alone, that I just felt like I can't I can't do this anymore. And the easiest way to find a route into going public and just getting this out in the open would be to go back through her. So that's what I did.

Wendell, you had a much different experience. This was something that you were pre planning, you had the famous Bill Moyer interview, will tell us more about how you how you decided to work with Bill and just the steps that it took and kind of all the production that happened to coordinate both that interview that aired along with the testimony in front of Congress.

One of the advocates that I had reached out to happen to know Bill Moyers and asked me if I would be interested in meeting with him and his team, that they had expressed some interest in having a conversation and possibly doing a story. So I did I went up to New York and met with them and it was better to our vetting session to make sure that they saw me as someone who is legitimate and had something important to say or at least interesting to say. So they agree they wanted to do a sit down interview, and they also wanted to send a crew to Washington to film my testimony. So that was different. That was probably very different from the way I guess most whistleblowers reached the media. I didn't know obviously when I testified that it was going to change my life. The following that I did have a sit down interview, extensive one with Bill Moyers, and it aired a few days after my testimony. The thing I think that that intrigued Bill was some of the stories that I told about the reasons I actually did leave Cigna when I referenced the fact that 50 million people didn't have health insurance in this country. was one of the reasons why I ultimately decided to leave my job. I had gone back to visit family in Tennessee and and heard about an outdoor clinic that was being held at a county fairgrounds not too far from where I grew up. And I went there out of curiosity, there was a story about it in my hometown newspaper, and I went there not having any idea what to expect. I had been able to lead a life that was so far removed from the ways so many people experience health insurance and health care in this country. I saw people who were standing in long lines at this clinic, waiting to get care by doctors and nurses who were volunteering their time and and those lines led to barns and animal stalls, people were being treated in animal stalls. This was in 2007 Actually, when this happened, and I I just was I was it just did something to me. I realized that had I not been fortunate I could have been one of those people. And I also realized that the work that I was doing, as a PR guy for the insurance industry, was obscuring the truth about how many Americans were not getting the care that they need, and in many cases couldn't get insurance at any price because at that point, insurance companies could still blackball you because of a pre existing condition they could refuse to sell you coverage because you've been sick in the past or if they were willing to sell it to you. It would be at a price that was just far beyond what most people could afford. I made a commitment that day to try to figure out some other way to earn a living. And as a former journalist, I was just so sad at what had happened to me. I still someone who, as a journalist tried to be straightforward and never mislead or obscure facts. That's what I was doing for a living and was being paid a lot more than when I was a journalist. It took though, another case that actually made me walk out the door I one of the responsibilities my team and I had we had to deal with what we refer to as high profile stories when somebody was denied treatment by the company that doctors said a patient needed every now and then the patient would reach out to the media and we would get a call from a reporter. Why did you in this case? Why did you why did Cigna deny coverage for a liver transplant for a 17 year old girl in Los Angeles? At first I was just kind of dismissive. I thought, well, we could just make this story go right way like all the others by just sending out a statement to the reporter and working kind of on background and make the story go away. This was not going to go away. And it ultimately became a very big media problem with PR problem for for Cigna stories began to appear in LA and then all over the country. nataline had been diagnosed with leukemia some years earlier. Initially the the the the treatments were working but ultimately they didn't she needed a liver transplant, which was covered under her family's policy. But a medical director in Pittsburgh 2500 miles away from nataline and the UCLA Medical Center decided that in his opinion it wasn't medically appropriate or medically necessary for nataline. The family was just not going to take that denial and appealed it. The pill didn't work so they decided to make a big stink about it and they were successful in getting a lot of media attention focused on Natalie's case. So much so that my company a few days later, decided, look maybe we can just reverse that denial and the story will go away. And I kept the CEO briefed about what was going on. The family actually had arranged to have a protest in front of sickness offices in Glendale, California. And I let the leadership of the company know what was going on. The CEO called a meeting and decided during that time that the company would reverse that denial and one of my jobs was to try to figure out how to get the word to Natalie's family that Cigna was going to pay for the transplant. And I was watching on TV. It was CNN was doing this live and I could tell when someone actually did tell Mrs. Sarkeesian that Cigna had changed his mind would pay for the transplant it was I felt mission accomplished. I've done something here that might save this young woman's life. The problem is she got sicker during the time that the transplant request had been sent to Cigna in the first place she got sick sicker, and she became ineligible for a transplant. As she died five hours after Cigna said it would cover the transplant and I could not do that again. So a few weeks later, I turned in my notice and and left the company that wish she was a victim of something that's in the news now. The Affordable Care Act didn't fix this is called prior authorization and it's an it's something that health insurers use to this day to keep people from getting the care that they need and more often than not, it is used to save money to avoid paying for needed care. The OIG just a few weeks ago did a report about how major for private health insurance companies in particular are using prior authorization and both the Medicare Medicare Advantage Program and the Medicaid program to refuse to pay for needed care. So there's a lot of work yet to do but people die every single day you don't see as many stories as you should about the nataline Sarkeesian 's that are out there. But that was that was the ultimate reason why I left the my job and why I felt an obligation to change sides if you will and try to help people understand this corrupt system that we still have in this country.

So in the latter half of the session, I want to talk about what's needed what's needed in terms of of helping whistleblowers individually like you all both in terms of the relationships that you have with reporters and news organizations and Rebecca for you I want to I'll ask them about that. But for Rebecca for you. I want you to take a step back for us and think about it from an ecosystem, a media ecosystem in terms of you worked with a lot of whistleblowers now the signals network, you have a good sense of kind of the range of services that they need. Can you tell us what does the industry in terms of helping whistleblowers and getting more of them telling their stories writ large and supporting them after the fact? What does the industry need to do in order to help that in order to help whistleblowers so why don't we start there and then I'll

Great. Thank you. I mean, there are a number of things that can be done one is what we're doing today, which is just to let people know that this is what the person who you're dealing with as a whistleblower as a source goes through. And and you know, it's not that you need to be their friend but you can put them in you can help them find the help that they need. We I mean, we hope as a small nonprofit, supported by night to be able to come to the journalists or for the journalist to come to us quickly and and to be able to say, you know, I've got this person you know, she's got security issues or, you know, maybe she's got some PTSD or whatever it is, can you help her out and I and I think that that is extremely helpful to the whistleblower, but also to the journalist, journalist has a job to do. And I think I think that whistleblowers know that they fully understand that but they they don't know where else to turn to. So by involving someone who can give them some support, it allows for the journalist to focus on telling that story. So that's one of the things that I would I we hope to you to do in the ecosystem is to make it more clear and to help more journalists. Get the help they need for their sources. earlier. I would say that

alley. Personally, as you're thinking you're grappling with the issues right now. What would you say? advice you would give to reporters who are going to work with the next generation of alleys? What would you tell them in terms of being able to work with whistleblowers like yourself? How can they help you?

I think I would say that it's important to get an outside support, like the signals network early on in the process. I did not understand before all this happened that whistleblowing is a fundamentally traumatic experience. It's painful. And if I had had a support network that could link me up with I mean, therapy, for goodness sakes, if I had had a therapist to talk to, while all this stuff was happening, it may not have put so much of the onus on Rachel to support me emotionally. And to some extent, in my situation, there's only so much that could be done because I straight up violated a professional obligation. So I had a unique need. I needed to find a pro bono attorney who could help me with the disciplinary process. I found that on my own, it was hard. The Times gave me a couple of suggestions to start with, and I kept getting passed along, passed along, passed along passed along until finally someone helped me. And if I hadn't had to deal with all of that on my own, and again in secret. If I'd had an external support early on, it would have made a huge difference.

And, Wendell, obviously what you did is is far in the past, now, you're still living it every day. What advice do you have now with the perspective of time that you can give when you're talking to other journalists and whistleblowers like ally to

Well, first of all, thank you so much for doing this for this panel. And for what you all do the signal network and night support for this. It's so important. Whistleblowers really can help journalism and help you tell stories you otherwise would not be able to tell. I think as a journalist, and again, I was one I know you talk to sources all the time, and it becomes a story it can be a big story, but then you go on to your next story and and you typically don't understand or appreciate what the person is going through. And it's it's, it's facing the unknown, and usually you have worst case scenarios in your mind to start with. If you are testifying against someone and in court, sometimes there's legal protection that you get some support to even establish a new identity or move away. There's nothing like that exist in this world. But it can be just as scary. The people you work for are no longer your friends you've got you've severed ties with people you've worked with and even people you know who you think are your friends may not necessarily be there for you. I can remember so vividly getting an email from a former from a college roommate of mine after my story was out there saying well, window lunch, you biting the hand that fed you so you get that kind of stuff and it can stab you. It's really hard. But you so you, I think the journalism profession needs to understand that there is a role that the profession needs to play and in providing some support that didn't exist that I knew off when I when I did what I did. It's so important because people are putting their lives their careers that at at jeopardy, and often it doesn't have a happy ending. You can get sued. You can have legal issues have a hard time finding another job. I knew that I was never going to be able to work in a corporate job again. And that didn't bother me. I was sort of late in my career. When I left I was 56 I think when I left Cigna but still I had to figure out how do you piece a life together? How do you go forward? How do you how do you find a way to earn a living and you feel cut adrift untethered, so it's, it's something I again, thank you so much for doing this and I want as you talk to whistleblowers to have a bit of understanding of what they're going through, and try to maybe even be equipped to offer some resources, some advice to them. And also know that as they anticipate your story coming out, that too is a terrifying time. You don't know how you're going to be quoted. I did this kind of work for decades working for the industry. I talked to reporters all the time, so that gave me some level of comfort that most whistleblowers don't have. Talking to a reporter can be damn scary. Anytime, but I'd done it as part of my my profession. But I can remember every time I talked to a reporter or just a routine story, I was always nervous about how I was going to be quoted in the story or portray because I knew that my, my CEO would be paying attention. So that's always something that's going on. But if you're doing something as a whistleblower, and you haven't had experience in working with the news media, it can absolutely be paralyzing. And so just know that all that is going on for a person who's trying to do the right thing and doing and willing to do that at enormous cost.

I want to start getting some audience questions, so please feel free to start lining up the mic if you have them. And in the meantime, Rebecca, I want to talk to you about the urgency of of addressing and starting to provide these services to whistleblowers right now, both in the sense of like the number of whistleblowers seems to be increasing and accelerating, but also the complexity of the kinds of needs that whistleblowers need to have. Partly because they need it, but also partly because we're recognizing that these are new things that they deserve to have, like, you know, therapy and things like that, that I don't think we were thinking about 10 plus years ago, and so help us explain the urgency of the problem in terms of how it's accelerating and increasing the pace.

Sure. We have the number of folks who are coming to us has increased dramatically. I would say it has. There was a time in late 2021. When it became clear this I would really mark it in big tech with big tech needing more accountability around the Francis Hogan disclosure with the Wall Street Journal in October 2021, September October 2021. Where there was an understanding that if we are going to hold these big powers to account we are relying on very brave individuals to do so. To come forward. And and so that that after that we increase, we have quite an increase especially in the big tech industry. We work in any industry and also in government, but we do have a bit of a focus on big tech. So yeah, so we there is an increase. One of the other things as you mentioned is there's more of an understanding now that before the story comes out, the person needs to think about a few things. If you, for example, leave your job and then get another job before the story comes out. You're going to be better off than trying to get a job later. So that's like one of the that's just an example of one of the things to think about. Of course there's legal issues to think about, there's that your own communication, how you are going to be able to either address anonymously, you know, keep stay anonymous or go public. So there's all kinds of considerations that the sooner that someone can talk to someone who's not the journalist, but is supportive of the work the journalist is doing, the better.

There, tell us who you are and where you're from.

My name is Juliana. I'm a student at the University of Georgia. I'm really interested in the signals network and the work that you do and I'm curious about in the international context, how you mitigate different laws, legal issues, what kind of support do you provide for whistleblowers in those contexts? Thank you.

Sure. The signals network is international. We are mostly focused on Europe and in the US, but we also do some work in South Asia, Middle East and Africa. The laws are different. The protections are different. Everywhere you go. We spend a lot of time working with the laws that are in Europe we are currently putting together a handbook about the law in the UK and in Ireland. So while the issues around whistleblowing, and the whistleblower themselves can be pretty universal. If the laws make it different for for each, wherever they are. One example would be, you know, the if it's a government issue or like a whistleblowing about a government. It could be an area that is extremely dangerous, where security becomes the biggest issue. So or maybe they need a safe housing. So so the the issues change, but the experience themselves the journey themselves, can be very universal. Thank you.

Kristen mosbacher Varsa. business reporter here in Philadelphia for why why news. So just kind of in general during my career, not necessarily here in Philadelphia. Whenever I've like, not necessarily worked with whistleblowers, but people who are sources who maybe work for a specific company or our have company information like we've always been counseled by, like media attorneys that like we have to be really careful because we cannot like solicit company information, because then like we could get in trouble as a news organization. So like, Do you have any advice like there was even a situation one time when, you know, somebody gave us like the passwords to like a company dashboard and like we were told explicitly, not to access that and you have any general advice, like when you're, you know, interested in information, but like, how do you access it making sure that that you're not breaking the law?

We're not lawyers. Not some lawyers. I see some lawyers in the back over there.

i We have a legal director and I would definitely push Mike that question to her since I would get in. I have a lawyer. Please. Happy to exchange card.

Okay. Oh, and I would just add that in. There is a lawyer in my case in particular, it was always led by what I volunteered Rachel never requested anything. She was always led by the pieces of information I found most interesting, which I think is certainly seems like the safest way to go. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely. Please feel free reach out. Yeah, definitely. I have someone that you can talk to.

Randy. Yeah. Randy picked from the Reynolds journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. So this is for Wendell and Allie, you know, often when reporters start interviews or relationships, they kind of talk about the ground rules or kind of setting up here's, here's how this is going to work and they explain it and I think the idea of having an outside organization early on is awesome. But in your case, do you feel like there was you know, the ground rules were made, you know, given to you and they were easy to understand and they kind of carried you through the process? Or is that something that maybe more reporters and newsrooms need to think about? Before they even get to the step of bringing in the signals network or something like

that? It really is an obligation. I again, because of having worked in the media, as long as I did, I, I just had an understanding of the ground rules and made sure that I was talking to reporters that this is on the record, this is for background, this is off the record, whatever, just to make sure that you're, you're on the same page. I don't think a lot of people really understand the distinction. I think it's very important for journalists to be up front and explain what the rules are and how your story or whatever you tell them will may show up in, in in, in the in the media story. The the I think it's important to just maybe make a reference to the previous question. Make sure that you're you're not encouraging the person to do anything that really puts them in legal Jeopardy. And I've I've not been sued knock on wood. But I don't disclose anything that I sign an agreement not to disclose because in certainly in corporate America now almost everybody has to sign something. So you have to be very, very careful. Or you can get sued pretty easily. I haven't needed to disclose proprietary information about CIGNA, HUMANA, we're worth before because what I talk about largely is are just common industry wide practices, but that's not always the case when you're talking to a reporter. So you got to be very careful and not let them put themselves at an unnecessary risk. Sometimes the whistleblower decides is, even with having signed something and disclosing something that's presumably confidential or protected information, it's still worth it. But you need to have those kinds of conversations with the source as well too, and make sure that you're not miss misleading or just make sure that the person really understands what what's going on, and what they could be facing if, if you know, you know, if they do disclose something that really is truly considered company secret.

For me, I I felt like the the ground rules were always clear. The issue is that the messy reality of what we were experiencing together didn't always allow for the clean delineations that we might want out of ground rules, if that makes sense. I was always, you know, advised not to that i i shouldn't feel any pressure to do anything that would put me in legal Jeopardy. Obviously, the decisions I made came at a significant cost, but I knew that and I never felt I never felt pressured to do anything against my my own interest. And I had to be clear that I understood that that's what I was doing. So I think it's worth the ground rules are extremely important, but it's also worth considering the fact that as as the reporting journey continues, life might be messier than the rules allow for if that makes sense

might need an update to the ground rules.

Yeah, absolutely.

There are up there, Rebecca,

just around the NDAs and all those things that you need to sign these days. There is a movement to reduce NDAs that's pretty current. There. Of course in in California, the silence no more Act became a law because of a whistleblower. And she you know, she pushed it through and it's it. It does not allow for NDAs or keeping people from talking about sexual harassment in the state of California. There's also some some shareholder movement to reduce NDA at the number of NDAs that are signed. So hopefully there's a bit of a shift there.

That's actually that's one reason that I felt compelled to do what I did is because so many of the victims who are directly harmed would be in legal Jeopardy, they would be violating an agreement that I was not bound to my professional ethics were a completely different issue. So the the the risks and the loss losses that I faced and confronted were completely different than someone who has different legal obligations. It could be very serious. So I, I saw an opportunity to take take a risk that other people might not be in the position to go ahead

I'm a little shorter. So. Hi, I'm Libby Hobbs. I'm also a student journalist at the University of Georgia. And something I was curious about was care for whistleblowers after the fact that we've talked a lot about an ally you were mentioning how Rachel would still reach out to you, understandably so you weren't ready to pursue that relationship. But as a learning journalist, I was curious. How long should we keep reaching out? And one point do you see that relationship or how long do you see that relationship lasting? Is it something that you think will be a lifetime or is there a certain point where you're like, I am no longer ready to stay in contact with you. And then also from the signals network perspective. At what point are the people harmed, I guess ready to go back into their day to day life and is that care that you guys give a life long thing?

Oh, oh, gosh. I don't know that I'd ever thought about it that way. I think in in some ways, I'm going to be tied to Rachel for the rest of my life because working with her, fundamentally changed everything about the course of my professional existence. I don't regret working with her. I'm glad I met her. I'm glad she's in my life. And knowing her has been an enriching experience, even if it was also painful. I think until the whistleblower indicates that they want a hard stop that they want closure. That it's I think it's fair to consider the door open. And that's that's really what I did. With with Rachel. I didn't say never speak to me again. You know, it was just I can't I can't talk to you right now and maybe someday in the future. You know, so at intervals of maybe like six months, I think she would you know, send me a How are you or something? And I was always free to ignore those. But when I was finally ready, you know, I took her up on it. So

yeah, it's a really good question about when the journey ends. It varies for every whistleblower. I think there is a big difference between public and anonymous. So if the whistleblower is anonymous, a lot of the the the journey has to do with like PTSD, like trauma, and really dealing with with that, maybe they're maybe they are worried about some kind of security issue, a legal issue, but it's a lot less than if they're public. But the trauma the need for therapy and stuff that's pretty much universal. With a public whistleblower, it's it's long and it's a long process. There's a lot around, what do I do now? Like literally what do I do to make money but also you know, do I stay public? Do I continue to to fight for this issue? Like you know, like someone like ally like I mean, she's known as the hashtag me to whistleblower like, does she even want to really continue to fight for me to issues it's not a given that she that you know that we always put them into a box or want them in a box. And that's not it. That's not a given at all. So really dealing with that, trying to understand what kind of job we have a lot of what we do is we help whistleblowers. Think through what their next job will be, whether it'll be like in industry, we recently working with someone in France who just went back into the industry. He was anonymous, though, working with them to get fellowships, working to see if they, you know, want to go into some sort of public like a book deal or something like that. So it's it is, it's yours. It takes time. But we stay with them.

Thank you, Rebecca Simon.

Hi, all thanks so much. Wanda Lally, I really specifically want to say thank you for coming and I appreciate that you're here and continuing to tell your story. I hope that this is a healthy experience for you. I really do. I'm sorry journalism happened to you. Truly. So Mike, Mike, so I'm a reporter. i One of the things I do is do some journalism work on the Knight Foundation. We've done reporting about a legit financial impropriety. Racist, sexist workplace practices. And it's been challenging to develop relationships with those folks because it's an institution that has a high level of turnover, a secretly sort of autocratic leadership. So what is the responsibility? We talked a lot about, like, your responsibility and journalists responsibility, but what is the responsibility of public interest institutions to maintain whistleblower policies and practices that allow people like you to come forward without them losing your jobs?

It's almost like creating something that doesn't exist. And maybe from these, these kinds of sessions that really can be built. Whistleblowers, as I said earlier, and as we've talked can really make a huge difference in public policy and how corporations that corporate America behaves, typically and I think Ali would say the same thing. CBS is still around sickness still around. They're going to continue and they know they have tons and tons of lawyers and lots and lots of money. So they are going to be able to figure out how to how to go forward not so much for the people who are calling them out on wrongdoing. And I think there really needs to be some real serious thought to how can there be something that is available and known to potential whistleblowers that there is your you know, you're thinking about doing something that is very, very risky and can change and it will change your life. But if you have knowledge, and that there really are some good resources and lots of lots of resources at an institutional level, somehow, it can make a big difference and I think can can can really lead to meaningful change in in corporate behavior and in public policy. Also,

Rebecca, I think signals that work does a lot of advocacy work on behalf of whistleblowers too, right?

Yeah, there's, there's different kinds of advocacy. There's the advocacy around better protection for whistleblowers, and that's something that we really want to focus on, especially in the US and in Europe. But then there's the advocacy around whatever the particular issue is, and in many cases, we work with whistleblowers to take whatever the initial story was and to and to take it to the next level, whether it's through congressional hearings. We have a whistleblower who has been working with Parliament's throughout Europe. around helping deal with platform issues around platform workers. He's his he's known as the Uber whistleblower, Mark McGann and he has gone really far into influencing public policy. So there's a there's a really a real role there for the for the for the whistleblower in the US, where big tech is not regulated in any in any real fashion, whistleblowers have spent a lot of time working within the halls of Congress and in state houses to talk about the harms of social media. The issues around disinformation, and those are those are individual people who worked at those companies who came forward risks, their risk everything lost their jobs, and, you know, are willing to help influence policy. Thank you.

Thank you guys. Can we have a round of applause for our guests today? Thanks so much, guys. Definitely. Take a look at the signals network. Their QR code is there. If you ever want to hear more about some of the work they're doing? Ali, please listen to her podcast and feel free to chat with them afterwards. There's some nice people.

Oh, my kid, journalists here a parting thought. Obviously, you don't want things to go wrong, but if they do, you can survive it. Your source can survive it. The the worst thing that could have happened happened to me, and I'm still I'm still standing. My life isn't over. So it can be it can be really scary to take a risk if you don't know what, what could happen if the worst befalls you and I just I hope that journalists and sources can keep in mind that even even if things do go wrong, even if you make a mistake, it's it's possible to survive. Thank you guys.

You sure