Deception for Journalism's Sake: A Database

Deception for Journalism's Sake: A Database

Young Conservatives Investigate

The work of groups such as James O'Keefe's Project Veritas and Lila Rose's LiveAction and their undercover operations.

ACORN, census, conservative activism, James O'Keefe, medicare, NPR, planned parenthood, posed as, Undercover, Veritas, video

Lapses

These are examples of undercover reportage that were considered to have crossed ethical lines or that caused major legal wrangles.

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

Undercover Along the Food Chain

Reporters have taken the undercover route from slaughterhouses and chicken- and pork-processing plants to fast-food chains and supermarkets to understand the system.

Food Lion, meatpacking, posed as, poultry processing, slaughterhouses, Smithfield, supermarkets, worked as

"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

Jail Time Undercover

Reporters have worked as guards or gotten themselves arrested -- sometimes with the aid of authorities and sometimes without -- to investigate conditions inside prisons and jails.

Ben Bagdikian, Charles Howe, Nellie Bly, Pierre Salinger, posed as, R.H. Ring, Richard H. Stewart, Ted Conover, Tim Findley

Medicare and Medicaid Fraud

Medicare and Medicaid fraud have been perennial reporting topics since the 1960s, often requiring undercover techniques to amass specific details.

fraud, medicaid, medicare, posed as patient, presented as patient, scam, undercover