Waste, fraud, graft, laxity, dilapidated conditions, corruption: Reporters have often used undercover tactics to investigate.
Redpath, Olcott, Richardson and Thomson all went South for the New York Tribune and produced reporting undercover in the run-up to the Civil War.
Among the most common of poses: journalists who elect to live as tramps, the homeless, or the abject poor.
Reporters have worked as migrant laborers and shadowed undocumented workers crossing the border into the United States.
Reporter efforts to get inside the world of lobbyists, both on Capitol Hill and in the statehouses.
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.
Medicare and Medicaid fraud have been perennial reporting topics since the 1960s, often requiring undercover techniques to amass specific details.
