In her 2012 Financial Times article, Carola Hoyos presents eight UK cases of whistleblowers. They are all widely known and their stories have been told in many medias through interviews, reports, and critical analysis. Brought together, they provide a representative panel of whistleblowing in terms of diversity of organizations, profiles, sectors and motives.

During this work-in-autonomy, your aim is to work in teams to document yourselves on one of these cases (see “Repartition”) to prepare a synthetic presentation (see “Presentations”). Although the structure is free, you will have to at least address the following questions:

• What were the whistleblowers’ situations before they blew the whistle?
• What were the specific wrongdoings faced?
• How do they talk about the dilemma they faced? Was loyalty an issue?
• What were their motives? What was the trigger for blowing the whistle?
• Did they try to signal misconducts internally first? With what results?
• What were the reactions of the organization? Of their colleagues? Of the public? Of the media?
• Did they need protection from the law? In which way?
• Did they manage to stay in the same industry?
• By the end, what is their feelings regarding their own action? Are there any regrets?
• Do they feel that they have been courageous? Were they scared?

Presentations should be documented narratives rather than linear exposés; following the prior list point by point is strongly discouraged.
The mode of presentation is free. Yet, references should be clearly mentioned all along (each time an information is used). Moreover, only “legitimate” sources will be accepted: newspaper, magazines, direct interviews, etc. Presentations should be based on as many quotes from the whistleblower as possible (with clear reference obviously).

Presentations
Presentations will be in English and last 10 minutes maximum. All team members are not necessarily expected to say something. Yet, the richness of sources should represent the number of people involved in preparation research. Nearly a dozen students working during 4 hours should be able to produce an in-depth analysis based on a diversity of documents and display critical distance. Summaries of Wikipedia pages will not be tolerated…

Repartition

Schedule