On World Whistleblowers Day WIN's Executive Director, Anna Myers, spoke with Susan Coughtrie for The Foreign Policy Centre.
Myers spoke about the need for greater whistleblower protections,SLAPPs and defending the wider public interest ecosystem. Myers also outlined what action the UK Government should take to improve the protections for whistleblowers at a legislative level as well as what journalists can do to help better protect them as their sources:
The relationship between whistleblowers & journalists:
" It seems to me that journalists are coming to realise they cannot operate as well if whistleblowers do not have some protection. And that such protection is part of protecting the wider information ecosystem that ensures independent journalism can flourish."
UK Government's approach to anti-SLAPP measures
"The UK Government should view anti-SLAPP measures as an important check on power that protects the environment in which they get the information they need to act."
WIN's goals:
"Part of WIN’s goal is to help build the civil society capacity to make the collective case very quickly, to ensure that the whistleblower is not the only messenger of the public interest message they have delivered. It is much easier to shut down and discredit a single whistleblower than a whole community that agrees with them."
Read full interview here.