Waste, fraud, graft, laxity, dilapidated conditions, corruption: Reporters have often used undercover tactics to investigate.
Among the most common of poses: journalists who elect to live as tramps, the homeless, or the abject poor.
Journalists who infiltrated U.S.-based Nazi bunds, the Ku Klux Klan, the Gomorrah, and other secret societies and closed groups.
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.
Undercover journalism has been the subject of heated discussions, especially since the late 1970s, and whenever an undercover sting causes a stir.
Journalists have devised any number of ruses to get inside hospitals and clinics -- as patients or staff members.
These are stings to expose scam artists, quacks and hucksters who prey on the needs or naivete of their customers, clients, or patients.
