Muckraker

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Muckraker

A term for a journalist or other person who exposes corruption, especially in business or politics. The term has had both positive and negative connotations throughout its history. In the positive sense, muckrakers are thought to champion truth by exposing corruption. In the negative sense, the term connotes a person who is willing to compromise truth for a good story. That is, some muckrakers may exaggerate or in some cases simply make up their allegations.

References in periodicals archive ?

Contemporary exposes of tainted overseas drugs and toys, like recent reports about contaminated meat and produce at domestic grocery chains and fastfood restaurants, trace their origins to America's early muckrakers.

The challenges and opportunities of 21st Century muckraking '... investigative reporters are a hardy breed who will tenaciously uphold their watchdog mission in bad times as well as good.'

Now a journalism professor at Columbia University, Coronel also trains other muckrakers from developing countries.

Muckraking goes global: as investigative reporting recedes in the United States, exploding around the world, often online and frequently in countries where it has never been seen before

Among those journalists whose blend of temperament, timing and tenaciousness has propelled them into the ranks of successful muckrakers, besides Anderson, I'd put Ida Tarbell, Seymour Hersh, Jessica Mitford, Ida Wells-Barnett, and the team of Donald L.

The inner fire of muckraking journalists: '... without the time-honored, shoe-leather investigative work and skillful interviewing, passion and outrage amount to little in the journalism realm.'

Brady, Kathleen, Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker.

Ida M. Tarbell's "women in journalism"

The site grew to include a group blog, TPM Cafe, a campaign blog, Election Central, and an investigative arm, TPM Muckraker, with full-time Washington and New York reporters digging up political dirt under Marshall's direction.

Let's do lunch: twenty-one new power players you wish you'd been nicer to

Little writes the Muckraker column on environmental politics and policy published in Grist.

'GREEN' PEOPLE: Amanda Griscom Little Joins Sundance Advisory Committee

However, unlike Upton Sinclair, Tim Carney is no socialist muckraker, for this book is not a novel, but an investigative report that reveals a dirty secret of American politics, namely, how Big Business works with both Republican and Democratic politicians to erode the freedom and economic well-being of consumers, taxpayers, and small businesses.

Business vs. government: in his book The Big Ripoff, Timothy Carney blows away the deception that Big Business and the government are adversaries and that the government defends the average citizen

1934 California business interests declared war on Upton Sinclair, the socialist muckraker turned Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

Attack ads are good for you! In praise of negative campaigning

The meat industry was unregulated, and the only person with the stomach to look closely at the resulting product was Upton Sinclair, muckraker extraordinaire.

The FDA: it's a jungle in there

If you were a muckraker today, what would you write about?

1906: uproar from 'The Jungle': a novel reveals foul conditions in the food industry and helps spur the reforms of the Progressive Era

If you wanted to be a muckraker, I bet you could find lots of bad things to list as the side effects of publishing a paper in our civilization.

Economic hit man

Like almost every honest muckraker we know, every time we write a few negative things about sport, we wind up feeling guilty.