A scandal can be broadly defined as the strong social reactions of outrage, anger, or surprise, when accusations or rumours circulate regarding a person who is, or persons who are, perceived as having transgressed a social norm in some way. These reactions are usually noisy and may be conflicting, and they often have negative effects on the status and credibility of the persons or organizations involved. Society is scandalized when it becomes aware of breaches of moral norms or legal requirements, often when these have remained undiscovered or been concealed for some time. 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. In contemporary times, exposure of a scandalous situation is often made by mass media. 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...
Extract from Wikipedia: “Scandal” (CC BY-SA 4.0).
