POLITICS | October 1st, 2019 8:49 AM

The whistleblower complaint against President Trump concerning his phone conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine has been available to the public for the past several days; however, until now it has been missing a key component to the original report: the whistle itself. Because the subject goes widely unreported throughout the media due to the systematic dismissal of the importance of audible accompaniment to politically relevant testimony, not many know that whistleblowers and their reports derive their name from the tradition of supplementing whistleblower documentation with a piece of light, melodic whistle music.

Without the whistle, the Ukraine complaint was lacking a certain subtle essence, which could easily invite misinterpretation. That concern, however, has been assuaged by an early-morning press release stating that the whistle in question turns out to be a tin whistle. It was discovered near the congressional coffee maker being used as a swizzle stick.

Many modern tin whistles are made from plastic, but the Ukraine whistleblower complaint was accompanied by a metal tin whistle, which has a slightly smoother sound. The product is a brilliant marriage between the music and the content of the complaint.

The brilliance is a testament to the prowess of this particular whistleblower. However, the whistle is not always an effective complement to the report, as in the case of Edward Snowden, who chose a slide whistle to accompany his disclosures. The result was a harsh timbral contrast to the subject matter and marked the beginning of the news media’s omission of the traditional musical component of the whistleblower report.