The whistleblowing use-case is transparency enhancing tech built on top of privacy enhancing technology; it does not mean that Tor itself is mainly transparency enhancing tech.
It occurred to me that I didn't fully answer your question. Your point was about *Tor*, not whistleblowing. So the concern is that (and correct me), "If we pitch Tor by saying it has a lot of transparency components, but it actually doesn't, then there's likely to be tension in the future."
This is all relatively fresh thinking, and I don't have good answers, but here's what I do have. I claim that each use-case can be put into either Privacy-column or the Transparency-column (can be weighted without loss of generalization).
And, averaging across this set of use-cases, some of which are Privacy (P), and some of which are Transparency (T), Tor falls somewhere on this spectrum, lets say we instinctively put it closer to the P.
P T |------W-----------------------|
I assert that some of the use-cases (e.g., whistleblowing) that the West instinctively puts into the P-column, more collectivist-cultures would instead put into the T-column. This would result in a different aggregate perspective of Tor, say something like:
P T |------W--------E--------------|
I can't say exactly how far to the T-direction it would go, but that it's shifted at all was news-to-me!
Doesn't completely answer you, but that's what I got. -V