Marketplace: Inside our hidden camera investigations

One of the things that surprises me when we're doing these hidden camera investigations is how much people are willing to share if they don't think anyone is listening. Hidden cameras have been an essential tool at Marketplace for decades. Hi, how are you? There is a lot that goes into our approach. Recording? Okay. And it all starts with our team who digs deep to find the truth. This is definitely rolling. There are a lot of circumstances where we're looking into antisocial or possibly even illegal incidents or issues. And if we were to walk in with cameras rolling, that would definitely change what would unfold. Recently, we went to car dealerships. We had a salesperson look at an ad with us for a car, and in the advertisement, it said one thing, but in reality, it didn't match up to what we could actually buy. The color that you see in the car, company doesn't make that. That's not a trust. Sadly, they put a picture of an upgrade. So we did a story on tipping where we went to a hundred businesses and documented whether or not they were asking for a tip. Honestly, tipping culture has gotten a little bit outrageous. Do you get these tips? Uh, no. Does the owner take them? Yeah. We found out that a lot of these places that were asking for tips, those tips weren't going to workers. And that's something that if I went in as a journalist, they may not be willing to disclose to me. In a lot of cases, our hidden camera investigations touch on systemic issues. So things that we know are not just isolated or a one-off. And often we find that with systemic situations, the answers and the accountability usually lies at the top and not with the people who are kind of on the lower level that we're interacting with in our hidden camera. Often, it's the case that when we actually air that footage, we choose to blur those people. Whether we choose to identify or blur, we always make sure to give them the opportunity to respond. When you're watching the episode, just know we reach out to everybody far in advance and we give them a chance to try to respond, right? We want to be fair, we want to be balanced. Everything we do is in the public interest, in support of the consumer, and we touch a lot of topics that are important to a lot of people. Everyone shops, everyone has to buy stuff, so I think Marketplace is really important to keep those companies in line.