Deception for Journalism's Sake: A Database

Deception for Journalism's Sake: A Database

"Blackbirding" - The Slave System's Just-as-Evil Twin?

Journalists from the United States and Australia get inside the post-Civil War practice of recruiting Pacific Islanders to work the world's non-U.S. plantations on extended contracts of indenture.

colonialism, George Morrison, indenture, J.D. Melvin, missionaries, San Francisco Chronicle, slave ships, slavery, The Age, The Argus, the south, Undercover, W.H. Brommage

The Presidents Club Scandal and Other Such Undercover Exposes

 An undercover investigation by the Financial Times of behavior toward hostesses at The Presidents Club's annual men-only charity event in London and reaction to the story. 

employed as, Financial Times, groping, hired as, hostesses, London, Presidents Club, sexual harassment

Infiltrating the Far Extremes

Journalists who infiltrated U.S.-based Nazi bunds, the Ku Klux Klan, the Gomorrah, and other secret societies and closed groups.

joined, Ku Klux Klan, lived as, Nazis, posed as, White Socialists, White Supremacists

Other People's Work

Reporters encounter or inhabit the lives of very hard-laboring others.

class passing, day laborers, low-wage workers, mercenaries, migrants, posed as, tramps, unemployed, worked as

Hospitals and Clinics Undercover

Journalists have devised any number of ruses to get inside hospitals and clinics --  as patients or staff members.

hospitals, lived as, mental hospitals, posed as, sanitariumsm, worked as

Quacks, Thieves, Scam Artists and Hucksters

These are stings to expose scam artists, quacks and hucksters who prey on the needs or naivete of their customers, clients, or patients.

black arts, charletons, fortune tellers, hidden cameras, hucksters, mesmerists, posed as client, posed as patient, quackery, quacks, scam artists, stem cells, thieves, witches

Homelessness, Down-and-Out, Broke

Among the most common of poses: journalists who elect to live as tramps, the homeless, or the abject poor.

hoboes, homelessness, lived among, lived among, posed as, posed as, tramps