I don't like the comparison to whistle-blowing because it takes us into a much more complicated realm of hilchot loshon hara. Whistle-blowing has a clear implication of a grievance against the larger community. It is equally clear that running between two individuals saying "Plony called you a poopy-head" does nothing but sew further sinat chinam (senseless hatred) between the kid who wrote it and the kid bout whom it was written. Even if this is already known to both parties, the involvement of the third party almost always will make the situation worse by antagonizing someone. Thus, the Chofetz Chaim was pretty emphatic about tale-bearing being worse than writing something impolite in one's private notebook (as long as there is reason to believe that the notebook was meant to be private). It really doesn't matter how nasty it was at that point.
BTW, please remember that this is an explicitly Jewish environment we're talking about, and that the Chofetz Chaim (R' Yisroel Meir haKohen Kagan zt''l) spent decades thinking hard about these very issues, and concluded that there are different levels of severity. You're welcome to disagree with him, but in a Jewish context you'll almost certainly be incorrect.
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Date: 2007-09-30 08:50 pm (UTC)BTW, please remember that this is an explicitly Jewish environment we're talking about, and that the Chofetz Chaim (R' Yisroel Meir haKohen Kagan zt''l) spent decades thinking hard about these very issues, and concluded that there are different levels of severity. You're welcome to disagree with him, but in a Jewish context you'll almost certainly be incorrect.