These are stings to expose scam artists, quacks and hucksters who prey on the needs or naivete of their customers, clients, or patients.
Medicare and Medicaid fraud have been perennial reporting topics since the 1960s, often requiring undercover techniques to amass specific details.
Journalism that required costuming or even physical transformation by reporters reporting on racial, ethnic, gender or social groups not their own.
Reporters have presented as teachers or students to get an inside view of what goes on in schools and colleges.
Waste, fraud, graft, laxity, dilapidated conditions, corruption: Reporters have often used undercover tactics to investigate.
Undercover journalism has been the subject of heated discussions, especially since the late 1970s, and whenever an undercover sting causes a stir.
Going undercover as volunteers or invited guests has gotten reporters an inside look at some U.S. political campaigns. So has shadowing the candidates in their off-hours.
Journalists who infiltrated U.S.-based Nazi bunds, the Ku Klux Klan, the Gomorrah, and other secret societies and closed groups.
