Muzzled media poses major threat to whistleblowers and truth

Before I was outed as a whistleblower by Ron DeSantis — on live television, no less — I spent two weeks in a deep depression, not knowing how to move forward with the information I had.

The only answer I could see was the same answer whistleblowers had sought for generations: the press.

Daniel Ellsberg took the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times initially, before they shut down the story under pressure from then-President Richard Nixon.

So he went to The Washington Post, and when Nixon threatened The Post, they decided to publish, anyway.

The face-off between The Post and Nixon stands as one of the most important moments in journalism history.

Had I been given the chance to chart my own path in my whistleblower journey, perhaps that’s the route I would have taken.

Today, though, given the state of media, I’m not so sure.

The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, once seemed like a bright light in the darkness of American media.

Today, in the shadow of Bezos’ egregious decision to control the paper’s opinion column, Americans are looking at our media with renewed criticism.

Interference by billionaires in the papers they own extends far beyond the paper’s editorials, though.

A recent column by Whistleblower News Network, an off-shoot of the National Whistleblower Center, highlighted how dangerous the media landscape can become for whistleblowers if faith in the press continues to falter as it is now.

Whistleblowers change history.

I do not want to live in a society where the few brave enough to tell the truth have no one brave enough to print it.

And it’s not paranoia to say the media are already holding back stories of critical import. News broke more than a week ago about a story pitched to dozens of news agencies regarding secret recordings taken of Trump — a story one reporter said would “end his campaign.”

News agencies, intimidated and threatened with retribution, have continued to sit on the “campaign ending” story, a gross violation of the foundations of journalism.

Then there’s the very public cases of lying in the media — like the fabricated story about mass rape by Hamas published in The New York Times — that erode public trust in media.

That case was severe enough to make me swear off the The New York Times for good.

If I were a whistleblower trying to find a path to share an important, history-changing truth, I’m not sure I’d trust the press right now to publish it.

And that puts all of us in grave danger.