An age of scandal entrepreneurs and scandalous production: Undercover journalism and its public interest scandals

Abstract

Recently, UK investigative documentaries have taken the option to use covert hidden camera technology to capture scandalous revelations occurring within British institutions. Often branded with the moniker of ‘undercover’, these programmes offer unique insights into the production and impact of the modern technology-shaped scandal. This paper analyses examples of BBC Panorama and Channel 4 Dispatches programmes (2019/2017) and related professional reflections to argue that these programme teams have evolved into scandal entrepreneurs, using scandal technology to purposefully capture transgressions in public institutions and thereby produce ‘public interest scandals’. Created, in practice, are visualised evidence claims of scandal (i.e. scandal capital) around which they devise specific scandal representations and programme marketing. Produced with the purpose to generate reaction and impact across the media system and beyond, these forms of scandal capital and their related production practices demonstrate, it is suggested, the realities of producing forms of covert investigative journalism within ‘market conscious’ public service broadcasting.

Introduction

Scandals are appearing more frequently, leading some to suggest that we are experiencing increased scandalous revelations alongside muted scandal outcomes as part of an ongoing process of scandalisation (von Sikorski and Kubin, 2021). Whether this is the case, or not, social media is often implicated as a source of the increased revelations and scandal hype (Dvorak, 2023). But there are other developments that we need to consider, also – such as the new genre of scandal-based documentaries. As will be argued here, these programmes need to be taken seriously for their production of technology-shaped scandals. Taking these programmes seriously demands we revise our view of the media scandal in which whistle-blowers provide evidence of transgressions to journalists who, in turn, package revelations into scandal stories, following assessments of their viability. These scandal-based documentaries help to rethink the scandal production process. As will be discussed, they offer new insights into: (i) a particular type of produced scandal – the ‘public interest scandal’, a sense of programme teams acting as (ii) scandal entrepreneurs, alongside insights into their production of (iii) scandal representations and (iv) scandal capital as based on (v) scandal producing technologies with particular (vi) media ecology-based and other impacts.

These programmes can be defined as an ‘undercover genre’. The BBC Panorama and Channel 4 Dispatches flagship documentaries in particular have been at the forefront of exposing observed transgressions (i.e. the breaking of accepted professional norms) within various UK institutions recently – including schooling (e.g. Undercover Teacher, 2005), religion (e.g. Undercover Mosque, 2007), social care (e.g. Undercover Care, 2011), health care (e.g. Undercover Ambulance, 2023), policing (e.g. Undercover in the Police, 2025). In part, they are a visible success story emerging in contrast to the often-heard lament about the shrinking of investigative journalism practice in the UK (Ware, 2011). But these programmes translate, rather than escape, the noted economic challenges that face investigative work within broadcasters with public service remits (see Ofcom, 2024). As such, many programmes adopt the label of scandal for their programmes – for example, The Breast Impact Scandal (2019), The Great Housing Scandal 2016, etc., – and, within them, deliberately present to audiences the process undertaken to gather the evidence of wrongdoing. Featured, in turn, are snapshots of those most heinous transgressions, captured with hidden camera technology, which are ready to be reproduced and circulated. In producing then changing forms of scandal and scandal impacts, these programme teams act as newfound scandal entrepreneurs.

The following discussion will reflect briefly on two similar examples of programmes from the Panorama and Dispatches series that focus on observed transgressions in social care practice (i.e. BBC Panorama Undercover Hospital Abuse Scandal 2019; Channel 4 Dispatches -Bupa Care Homes Undercover 2017). Both programmes received reactions across different media and from the public and related institutions and, later, featured in official reviews and remarks on social care (including court cases – see Jagger and Harris, 2024). Moreover, it is important to note that these are produced by significant media players in the UK media ecology (i.e. British Broadcasting Corporation and Channel 4 Television Corporation). Although the BBC and Channel 4 are funded differently (BBC being largely publicly funded and Channel 4 being commercially funded), they work with a public service remit to produce news and current affairs provision and both face related domestic market pressures. What is produced from these unique broadcasting contexts provide new insights into the scandal process, as will be explained next.

A revised scandal process

Both of the outlined programmes involve undercover journalists entering care facilities under the guise of being trainee care workers. Through the process of investigating the sites (i.e. Panorama, Whorlton Hall Hospital – 2 months; Dispatches, Crawfords Walk Dementia Home – 3 months), the undercover journalists (Olivia and Ailish respectively) use hidden camera technology to record their experiences, including instances of observed transgressions over normal professional conduct and practice. These journalistic efforts challenge the basic process by which mediated scandals are normally produced. What is observed in these programmes are institutional staff transgressing recognised professional norms, as is often the focus of mediated scandal events (see Esser and Hartung, 2004). But these observations follow a different journey to mediated scandal than is found previously (see Thompson, 2000). Specific technology (as discussed below) is used to capture them, and the features of the representations of scandal that emerge consequently are produced through a unique process of professional planning, collecting and packaging. These practices shape the captured observations into a recognisable product that is ready for broadcast and wider circulation.

As such, the journalistic practices in these instances differ from those involved normally in the production of mediated scandals. The programme teams actively capture and explain scandals more than simply add particular journalistic reaction, amplification and accountability (Greer and McLaughlin, 2013) to already known scandal ‘activation events’ including now speech transgressions (Ekström and Johansson, 2008) as is performed elsewhere. These practices offer a new media-based explanation for the origin of modern scandals, for instance as is suggested similarly in some examples of social media scandals (see Eder, 2024). Also, they show programme teams functioning as ‘scandal entrepreneurs’ (as discussed below) as part of their efforts to capture scandals. Combined, these observations enhance our existing arguments about the production of media scandals and the importance these often give to changing historical, political, and cultural contexts as explanatory factors (see Haller et al., 2021). They also add to our sense of increased scandalous revelations appearing in the west or what von Sikorski and Kubin (2021) explain now as the modern experience of living in a permanent process of scandalisation.

As such, these programmes develop our ideas about mediated scandal and the reasons that inform their production. In contrast to other scandals, the interests of these programme teams focus on the uncovering of revelations within modern institutions in which the public know and interact. Named subsequently as ‘public interest scandals’ (as discussed below), these particular mediated scandals add complexity to our understanding of the production of existing – corporate, celebrity or political – scandals. In the process, they reveal the importance of the broadcasting context in their construction. Programme teams operating in broadcasting institutions that feature public service and ‘market-conscious’ media production, produce this particular form of scandal purposefully to gain visibility in other media and beyond.

Public interest scandals

As mentioned above, the rise of undercover investigations has led to the production of what can be termed as public interest scandals. Public interest scandals focus on institutions to which the public have direct knowledge and contact. For instance, an Editor for Panorama describes the programme team’s actions in dealing with these as their efforts to ‘. . .expose sorts of systemic and institutional wrongdoing’ (Jupp, 2019). This involves, from the perspective of the Dispatches team, ‘more risk-taking, agenda-setting and original journalism’ (Commissioning Editor – Joanna Potts, Channel 4 2022). The public interest scandals they produce contrast notably with scandals traditionally defined more broadly as those ‘in the public interest’. The latter fall into several types including political, corporate or celebrity scandals (see Prusa, 2024). Most often these emerge from a media that is vigilant as to the conduct of office holders and particular professionalised norms (Esser and Hartung, 2004) in the context of the recognised checks and balances involved in liberal democratic systems (Tumber and Waisbord, 2004). Public interest scandals, by contrast, focus on the institutions in which the public have direct contact. Both of the included programmes, for instance, focus on institutional staff in positions of authority who perpetrate ‘harm’ onto those who should be receiving institutional safeguarding. The Dispatches programme, for example, introduces these professional transgressions in the following way: ‘Our reporter, Ailish, is finding evidence of institutional abuse and neglect’ (Dispatches, 2017). The Panorama programme does the same, and both programme teams can be seen to be acting as scandal entrepreneurs in these moments and therein casting light on transgressions captured from their unique investigations.

Scandal entrepreneurs

When producing their public interest scandals, these programme teams function in a way different to that of other journalists. Arguably, they function as scandal entrepreneurs as they target the use of undercover work for this particular purpose. The scandal entrepreneur, a new term, represents the teams’ intentions and actions that underpin their systematic capturing of transgressions. As teams now originate the mediated scandal, they replace the individuals and groups who normally perform the role of the whistleblower in the mediated scandal. Similar to the moral entrepreneur to which Cohen (1972) attributes to instigating the visibility of moral panics, these programme teams actively plan and execute the process of scandal capture.

In addition to replacing the function of the whistleblower as both originators of, and actors within, mediated scandals, the actions of these programme teams also challenge our knowledge of the production of scandal reporting. In the planning process for programmes, these scandal entrepreneurs look away from the traditional news values and journalistic reasoning associated with the practice of reproducing mediated scandal. Cast aside is the traditional journalistic interest in the status, moral transgressions and general hypocrisy of elites, for instance (see McNair, 2019: 80). Placed in focus, by contrast, are the plights of ordinary people at the hands of institutions. These teams and their broadcasting institutions consider this choice to be both relevant and popular. For instance, an Editor at Panorama translates this thinking as the programme’s efforts to ‘. . .find out truth about the stories that matter to people’, suggesting that ‘Those stories will change over time . . . but as long as Panorama is reactive and responsive, then I think it will stay relevant’ (Jupp, 2019). In the same vein, Dispatches efforts are introduced as producing ‘. . .powerful investigations which lead to real and meaningful change, creating headlines for days and weeks to come’ by the Head of News and Current affairs at Channel 4, Louise Compton (Channel 4, 2022).

Characterising this investigative work as connected to ideas of public relevance and public interest, as above, has implications for their scandal production practice. It helps to shield these programme teams, in part, from the other observed motivations that inform scandal reporting, including the partisan agendas or political beliefs of stakeholders, owners, journalists, editors or readers (Puglisi and Snyder, 2011). As such, these scandal entrepreneurs escape both the above listed forms of ‘media instrumentalism’ (see Mancini, 2018) as well as any naked economism of using scandal to boost – often tabloid media – circulation (see Thompson, 2000). But encapsulated within their motivations are what Allern and Pollack (2012) observe as efforts to create a resource in a competitive media market. Arguably, programme teams’ use of particular scandal technology (see below) produces this ‘resource’ or what will be described here as a form of ‘scandal capital’. Scandal capital, it follows, is used to gain visibility, beyond the original broadcasting of these programmes, in the wider media ecology and elsewhere.

Scandal technologies

As newfound scandal entrepreneurs, these programme teams devise investigations that are assumed to be relevant and popular for the public. Their use of scandal technology is a feature of their particular approach to producing these programmes. As we know, technology remains important to creating the ‘opportunity structures’ that allow for the production of scandals over time (Bösch cited in Haller et al., 2021: 5). But these programme teams use specific miniature hidden camera technology purposefully in their work. This creates a source of debate and challenge for programme teams suggests Joe Plomin, a producer with BBC Panorama. He argues that questions should always be asked of their investigations, such as: ‘Was it necessary to use hidden cameras? Was it proportionate? Was there another way that the problems could get resolved?’ (Plomin, 2016: 48).

As the included Panorama and Dispatches programmes use of the title ‘undercover’ reveals, the answers to the above questions are assumedly in these cases – ‘necessary, proportionate and unavoidable’. Ethical and practical questions aside, this observed use of miniature hidden camera technology reflects a general trend in British investigative journalism that began with UK TV series in the 1990s, such as World in Action (see Plomin, 2016). Particular to the examples of Panorama and Dispatches referenced here, nonetheless, are the actions of covert investigative journalists – posing as care assistants – to record care staff committing expected acts of wrongdoing. In these cases, the employed technology is integral to the capturing of visible evidence of professional transgressions. Such use also develops thinking about the media technologies that shape the visibility of scandals up to this point (see Tumber and Waisbord, 2019; Zulli, 2021). It literally produces the visual evidence that forms scandal representations (see below) and that which gains ‘headlines for days and weeks to come’ (Louise Compton, Channel 4 2022) alongside wider reaction as evidence circulates – as forms of scandal capital – through the wider media ecology and beyond.

Scandal representations

Both the featured Panorama and Dispatches programmes provide new insights into the process by which their technology-shaped scandals become constructed. Delivered in a standardised documentary format, these programmes showcase the transgressions recorded in the covert investigations. They explain the significance of the observed transgressions for audiences using accompanying encoded thematic features – such as aspects of reaction, amplification and accountability (Greer and McLaughlin, 2013) – that appear elsewhere in scandal reporting. Combined, these set the scene for later reactions.

As part of their efforts, the programme teams include spoken accounts of the process of capturing wrongdoing. Narrated are explanations of the planning and the execution of the undercover filming, which makes visible their actions as scandal entrepreneurs. In the words of a Panorama Editor, this creates the ‘. . . feeling like you’re really on that journey with that journalist’ (Jupp, 2019). The following introduction to the included Dispatches programme illustrates this idea of the audience being taken on a journey:

So, we’re sending in an undercover reporter, Ailish, to see if we can find out what’s really going on. After specialist training in dementia care provided by Dispatches, and a five-day induction training by Bupa, she starts work (Dispatches, 2017).

As part of that journey, the undercover journalist will often narrate an account of the efforts to capture evidence of wrongdoing. For instance, the Panorama programme begins with the following journalistic account:

My name is Olivia Davies and I’ve been undercover as a care worker. I am feeling a bit nervous about it, actually. I’m living a completely different life. I see staff who couldn’t care less, patients mocked and intimidated and regularly restrained. It shouldn’t be like this (Panorama, 2019).

Additional comments provide greater personal reflection alongside thoughts on the potential risks of the investigation and its success in capturing the expected wrongdoing. Through recounting the process, the programme implicitly justifies the undercover filming as a means to a successful end – that is, the capturing of transgressions. Furthermore, these programmes include reactions to the captured wrongdoing. Provided are descriptions which introduce, and guide the audience through, the filmed transgressions – a feature of mediated scandal that represents the ritualistic nature of these mediated accounts (see Jacobsson and Löfmarck, 2008). Significant others are included specifically to offer a two staged process of assessment and reaction. First, experts feature to outline legal/normative judgements and to assess any evidence of a breach of acceptable professional boundaries. In the example programmes, the included experts offer judgements on the filmed transgressions as they are shown to them, such as: ‘I think it is like psychological torture’ (Professor Glynis Murphy, Panorama, 2019), and ‘This is absolute classic, textbook institutional abuse’ (Independent Nurse Consultant, Lynne Phair, Dispatches, 2017). As noted, the transgressors’ actions are assessed as unacceptable and requiring sanction.

After the transgressions and transgressors have been evaluated by the included experts, the programmes introduce, second, victims or relatives as a way to provide reaction to the filmed evidence of the observed wrongdoing. In the case of the Dispatches programme, a family watches the programme’s filming of their mother – as a resident in a dementia home – being pulled and shoved aggressively by her care assistant. One of the daughters when reflecting on the experience of the mental pain of watching the scene says: ‘I just still can’t. . . every time I see, you know, I get these pains. . . and sickness in my stomach’. She adds: ‘Just to think someone could do that to an elderly, vulnerable person - it’s heartbreaking’ (Dispatches, 2017). Used as ‘expertise by association’, the included relatives demonstrate outrage at the evidence of such wrongdoing – often these filmed instances being previously unseen by them. Such comments are then narrated in the programmes to make clear the consensual moral reasoning on these incidents for the watching audiences.

Scandal impacts

In addition to the unique nature of the outlined scandals and the related professional roles and practices, these programmes also allow us to think about the impacts of produced scandals. As is noted above, these programmes contain marked differences to general TV scandal reporting (see Eilenberg, 2018) which demonstrate the contrasting journey they take when developing mediated scandal. But, in terms of influences, these programmes share the potential long-term impacts that are associated with widespread scandal reporting in legacy media. They also produce, less discussed, short-term impacts that involve other media. The latter feature across the news ecology and are professionally articulated as ‘. . .headlines for days and weeks to come’ by the Head of Channel 4 News and Current Affairs (Channel 4, 2022).

The long-term impacts of these programmes feature similarly to previous mediated scandals. Reflecting on these, editors and production staff proudly discuss the repercussions of their broadcast programmes (e.g. see Jupp, 2019; Plomin, 2016). Referenced here are a variety of effects, such as the already acknowledged impacts on the individuals involved in scandal (von Sikorski, 2018), the reputations of related institutions and the stability of the systems that support them (Szasz, 1986) as well as impacts on future policy making (Lloyd et al., 2014). For example, the UK Care Quality Commission’s Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care commenting on the Channel 4 Dispatches programme reveals that: ‘The shocking evidence presented here of understaffing, bad practice and poor care confirms the issues we have raised and underlines why we have taken action’ (Care Quality Commission, 2017). A similar response is offered to the Panorama programme alongside a criminal prosecution (see Jagger and Harris, 2024). In addition to producing long term impacts, programme teams take a more immediate aim at establishing short-term impacts with their broadcasts. Acknowledging these impacts reveals a more complex picture of the interconnections between these programmes and other media alongside the journey by which ‘visible life’ is injected into these scandals.

In other words, these programmes’ singular broadcasts are devised to create reactions in other media and beyond. The Head of News and Current Affairs for Channel 4, for example, acknowledges this reality when applauding the programme team’s understanding of ‘. . .the growing influence of social media and the need to increase reach, relevance and engagement’ in these cases (Channel 4, 2012). By focussing programme design on gaining such ‘reach, relevance and engagement’ (or the visibility of their scandal capital across the hybrid media ecology), programme teams can justify the time and expense involved in their investigations. A cursory glance shows both of the included programmes are successful in receiving various types of media attention, including that of both broadcast and print journalism. Additionally, a greater level of public response emerges in the social media feeds of these programmes (i.e. Facebook and ‘X’) and in direct reply to the broadcasters’ own posts advertising the programmes. Further, a much greater level of reaction is sustained across social media generally and organised around particular hashtags (e.g. #hospitalabusescandal, #whorltonhall, #panorama, #BupaCareHomesUnderCover, #Bupa, #dispatches). As is found in other studies of social media scandals, these postings show the negotiating of transgressed norms (Adut, 2008; Hammarlin, 2021) among the participating public and wider organisations (Dvorak, 2023). Included here are displays of motivated reasoning (von Sikorski, 2020) and morality (Jacobsson and Löfmarck, 2008), including instances of articulated outrage, anger (Verbalyte, 2020), sympathy and distrust (Eilenberg, 2018).

Concluding remarks

In an age of scandalisation, or at least of one of increased scandals, this paper has introduced the role of the undercover genre in producing a particular brand of public interest scandal. As has been outlined, such scandals and their related production practices need to be recognised as part of any modern arguments about an ongoing scandalisation process. On reflection, these help to challenge the present assumptions about the flow and character of frequent modern mediated scandals. For example, the produced public interest scandals are markedly different to those scandals assumed often to be unimpactful media performances which emerge as part of a political context of post truth claims and altered political norms (see von Sikorski and Kubin, 2021). Indeed, they create notable impacts and, in the process, offer new conceptual understandings of the media production of scandal as being varied, rather than uniform, in a scandalous age. For one thing, the discussion has shown that modern scandal production is more varied than previously described. The included programme teams emerge as important new players working in the process of scandal capture. Their efforts reveal them to be taking a place as scandal entrepreneurs from whom these scandals originate. In employing hidden camera technology, these programme teams purposefully locate, capture and represent transgressions. As a result, they offer a visualised and easily reproducible image of the public interest scandal ready for wider circulation and consumption.

In addition, the captured images of these transgressions function as forms of scandal capital. As has been shown, visualised transgressions provide the basis for the broadcast programmes (and their marketing) and those around which the teams develop their unique scandal representations. Pertinent sections in the programmes serve then to verify and react to the represented transgressions. Featured experts purposefully assess the captured transgressions as being acts of deviance which break with professional codes and regulations. Later, relatives of victims emerge to provide their ‘expertise by association’ with emotional reactions to the visualised wrongdoing. Additional programme representations – including the undercover journalists’ narration – justify these investigations, their risks and pay-offs and prepare the ground for the wider public reception of their captured images of wrongdoing. Subsequently, the observed reactions to these representations, from both inside and outside the media, demonstrate there to be a staged process by which scandalous revelations (or scandal capital) circulate and influence.

In sum, the produced public interest scandal offers a new conceptual language to understand aspects of the modern technology-shaped scandal and its production. Arguably, its focus on undercover investigations into public-facing institutions and producing transgressions and outrage, reflects the challenging conditions that surrounds the production of investigative journalism in UK broadcasting (see Ofcom, 2024). On the one hand, we see that such scandals would not exist without the investment and support of the BBC and Channel 4 as significant players in the UK media ecology. This broadcasting context remains important therefore to any assessment we may make of the overall value and significance of this type of scandal and to understanding where similar scandal types and processes will emerge elsewhere (i.e. in different media systems). On the other hand, these scandals reveal the particular tensions between public service ideals and market pressures that are being negotiated in the programme production process by these UK programme teams.

The last point provides a useful starting place to begin the future analysis of the scandal capture process in broadcasting, from its planning to its presentation. How far assumed public outrage alongside institutional ethics and other issues feature as considerations in the scandal production process is an important future research concern. Likewise, the building of scandals through the reproduction of visualised transgressions (i.e. scandal capital) across other media and – in the longer term – the reactions and policy changes induced elsewhere will be equally important to study both in the UK and elsewhere. As this paper reveals, the connections between the mediated scandal, its scandal entrepreneurs, and our scandalous times require renewed academic attention.