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Whistleblowing doesn't require martyrdom or some sort of agenda of sticking it to the man. Whistleblowing means providing the public with proprietary insider information that one judges to be in the public interest, nothing more.

It's irrelevant if she represents some elite group or competing interest or whatever else. Someone can be at the same time aligned with some faction of the 'elite' while also being aligned with public interests, there is no necessary contradiction.

It's fashionable these days that every whistleblower these days wants to claim dissident status because it sells a lot of books and gets a lot of substack subscriptions but that's not really the point.

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My argument is precisely that what Haugen has done *isn't* in the public interest. It's an effort by old elites to return to an earlier status quo, where media were able to speak to us in a monologue. So if you're critiquing the article, you really need to get grips with that argument – not ignore it.

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"But the term 'whistleblower' also implicitly includes the idea of a cost – usually a heavy one – paid by the person blowing the whistle."

This is the part where I stopped reading because you absolutely suggest a required martyrdom, making the rest of your argument questionable at best. If you made other, better, arguments, good for you. But be mindful that your audience isn't required to read in full, and likely won't if you make poor assertions that lead me to believe it isn't worth my time to continue.

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Maybe, though I think that 'absolutely' is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in your comment. After many years of doing this, I have found people are very good at finding *any* reason to avoid following an argument to its end if it looks like it's going to reach a conclusion they won't like.

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