Scandals

A scandal can be broadly defined as an accusation or accusations that receive wide exposure. Generally there is a negative effect on the credibility of the person or organisation involved. Society is scandalised when it is made aware of blatant breaches of moral norms or legal requirements. In contemporary times, exposure is often made by mass media. Such breaches have typically erupted from greed, lust or the abuse of power. Scandals may be regarded as political, sexual, moral, literary or artistic but often spread from one realm into another. The basis of a scandal may be factual or false, or a combination of both.

Contemporary media has the capacity to spread knowledge of a scandal further than in previous centuries and public interest has encouraged many cases of confected scandals relating to well-known people as well as genuine scandals relating to politics and business. Some scandals are revealed by whistleblowers who discover wrongdoing within organizations or groups, such as Deep Throat (William Mark Felt) during the Watergate scandal in the 1970s in the United States. Whistleblowers may be protected by laws which are used to obtain information of misdeeds and acts detrimental to their establishments. However, the possibility of scandal has always created a tension between society's efforts to reveal wrongdoing and its desire to cover them up.

Scandals occur in the bible where it generally refers to sins committed against moral, religious or cultural expectations. For example, the rape of Bathsheba by King David created a scandal that was followed by political as well as personal consequences.

Academic dishonesty, also referred to as academic misconduct, is any type of cheating that occurs in relation to a formal academic exercise.

Although in the early part of the 19th century held the view that scandal does not mix with literature and science, some opined that a scattering of some amount of scandal in literature could enhance interest of people as scandal suits "the taste of almost every palate." Scandal, has however, been the subject of many books. Among the most famous of fictional stories about scandal School for Scandal (1777) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan and The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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