According to our whistleblowing source, who has been asked to give evidence to the new Parliamentary Committee on Banking Standards, set up in the wake of the Libor scandal in June, banks tend to take a very dim view of employees who break ranks.
"No risk manager wants to admit that he didn't do his job. So an unholy alliance of mutual self-interest kicks in," the source, who asked to remain anonymous, said. "So they'll do anything to bad-mouth a whistleblower as an underperformer. They have a 100% success record."
This is literally a figure of speech from a single guy who considers himself to have been "bad-mouthed as an underperformer", yet in the Independent article it became:
Powerful financial firms will destroy the lives and reputations of whistleblowers. Newsnight found they have a 100 per cent success rate
... which not only mis-attributes the quote but makes it sound like an actual statistic related to "destroying lives".
This is the worst piece of journalism I've seen for a while.