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

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

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

Uncloaking the Lobbyists

Reporter efforts to get inside the world of lobbyists, both on Capitol Hill and in the statehouses.

entered surreptitously, Eric Lipton, ken silverstein, Nellie Bly, posed as client, Undercover

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