e/Bad apples excuse

Information
has gloss	eng: A "bad apples" excuse or "few bad apples" excuse is a rhetorical attempt to spin misdeeds within a group as isolated to a "few bad apples", reminiscent of the way a single spoiled fruit in a container can hasten the ripening and spoilage of all the rest. Among other things, the term has been applied to excuses for corporate fraud in the wake of the Enron scandal , for the Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse case , the Chicago Police Departments response to off-duty officer Anthony Abattes videotaped beating of a bartender , ACORNs response to an undercover operation revealing a willingness of employees in several offices to aid and abet human trafficking and other illegal activities, and hypothetically, involving projections about organizational accountability. The term became popular soon after the airing of a Canadian broadcast from the CBCs Fifth Estate television series called "A Few Bad Apples". According to Michael Ignatieff, "The Few Bad Apples excuse is institutions' invariable first response to moral failure, and it’s the wrong response".
lexicalization	eng: Bad apples excuse
instance of	(noun) a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity metaphor