Hi everybody, Cheryl Ackison here. Welcome to another edition of the Cheryl Ackison

podcast. Today, unthinkable allegations about non-consensual medical procedures performed

on female prisoners. I'll bet you have something to say. Did you know you don't have to have

any fancy equipment to start your own podcast? Spotify for podcasters lets you record and edit

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Spotify.com slash podcasters to get started. Today, we're going to hear from a whistleblower as an

interesting aside, some of the most important truths about ethical or even criminal wrongdoing

inside government agencies or companies comes from whistleblowers. The typical story of a legitimate

whistleblower I found is that they discover what they perceive is a wrong. They try to fix it.

They find that their immediate supervisors aren't responsive. They escalate it thinking surely as

long as the big boss knows this is going on, it will be fixed. And then they're stunned to learn

that even when the thing is known at the highest levels, it's not going to be fixed. In fact,

now in a typical case, the whistleblower is treated as if he or she is the problem and that the

solution is shutting him or her up rather than writing the wrong. Only when all else fails on the

inside typically do they become whistleblowers and reach out to Congress, watchdog groups, or the

news media, the latter of which most of them aren't eager to talk to, but it's the last resort.

When I was an investigative reporter for CBS News in the early to mid-2000s, all news organizations

were doing important whistleblower stories, exposing problems inside government, the pharmaceutical

industry, in-ron, the Red Cross and other charities, Ford and Firestone, you name it.

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