Reporters have presented as teachers or students to get an inside view of what goes on in schools and colleges.
From 1968 to present day, reporters have gone undercover to expose the corruption and mistreatment that occurs within nursing homes.
These are examples of undercover reportage that were considered to have crossed ethical lines or that caused major legal wrangles.
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.
Medicare and Medicaid fraud have been perennial reporting topics since the 1960s, often requiring undercover techniques to amass specific details.
Across the world, journalists have used undercover techniques to expose individual predators and as well as major sex crime rings.
In efforts to get inside the fold, reporters have fellow-traveled with religious groups, posing as members or prospective recruits.
Among the most common of poses: journalists who elect to live as tramps, the homeless, or the abject poor.
