Editing Whistleblowing (section)

===Origin of term===
U.S. [[Civil activist|civic activist]] [[Ralph Nader]] is said to have coined the phrase in the early 1970s<ref>See: New Scientist 9 December 1971, p. 69: "The Code [of Good Conduct of The British Computer Society] contains secrecy clauses that effectively prohibit Nader style whistle-blowing"</ref>  in order to avoid the negative connotations found in other words such as "informer" and "snitch".<ref>Nader, Petkas, and Blackwell, Whistleblowing (1972).</ref> However, the origins of the word date back to the 19th century.

The word is linked to the use of a whistle to alert the public or a crowd about such problems as the commission of a crime or the breaking of rules during a game. The phrase ''whistle blower'' attached itself to [[Law enforcement|law enforcement officials]] in the 19th century because they used a whistle to alert the public or fellow police.<ref name="Meaning and origin">{{cite web|title=The meaning and origin of the expression: Whistle-blower|url=http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/whistle-blower.html|website=The Phrase Finder|publisher=Gary Martin|access-date=27 January 2017}}</ref> Sports [[referee]]s, who use a whistle to indicate an illegal or [[Foul (sports)|foul play]], also were called whistleblowers.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=whistleblower+&searchmode=none |title=Etymonline.com |publisher=Etymonline.com |access-date=8 July 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/whistleblower/ |title=Wordorigins.org |publisher=Wordorigins.org |access-date=8 July 2012 |archive-date=29 April 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120429004210/http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/whistleblower |url-status=dead }}</ref>

An 1883 story in Wisconsin's [[The Gazette (Janesville, Wisconsin)|Janesville Gazette]] called a policeman who used his whistle to alert citizens about a riot a ''whistle blower'', without the hyphen. By the year 1963, the phrase had become a hyphenated word, ''whistle-blower''. The word began to be used by journalists in the 1960s for people who revealed wrongdoing, such as Nader. It eventually evolved into the compound word ''whistleblower''.<ref name="Meaning and origin" />