Prebunking as Accountability Shield

Institutions increasingly use pre‑emptive 'prebunks'—formal campaigns that label anticipated disclosures as disinformation—to blunt future investigative revelations and to reframe whistleblowing as political attack. This is a tactical shift in information governance: rather than rebut claims after publication, organizations inoculate public perceptions beforehand to make later evidence seem reactive or illegitimate. — If prebunking becomes standard operating procedure, it will degrade mechanisms of public accountability, raise the cost of investigative journalism, and require new standards for provenance, timing, and adjudication of contested evidence.