In my line of work, whistleblower complaints often result in very concrete investigations and mitigative action being taken. One key similarity between these issues is that the problem is dealt with internally as discretely as possible.

Some organizations are looking for a paper trail to indicate they've done something - anything - to remedy the issue. Others try to get the full story and fix the rot.

I think we just don't hear about situations where the whistleblowers do a tremendous amount of good, because those are situations in which the problem has successfully been contained and thus aren't newsworthy.