Americans claim to hate fraud and corruption. Yet we also tend to despise and discourage those who “snitch” and expose such crimes. How do we reconcile these contradictory positions?

Today is “National Whistleblower Appreciation Day,” an observance to celebrate people e forward to raise the alarm about a problem within government or a public organization. In honor of the day I mend watching this video by Kelly Richmond Pope, an accounting professor turned documentary filmmaker, who considers why we hate whistle-blowers and touches on the lessons learned from whistle-blowers in some of the nation’s most high-profile cases. Pope makes the argument for why we need more whistle-blowers.