Muckraker
A muckraker is a journalist, author or filmmaker who investigates and exposes societal issues such as political corruption, corporate crime, child labor, conditions in slums and prisons, unsanitary conditions in food processing plants, fraudulent claims by manufacturers of patent medicines and similar topics.
Generally, muckraking tends to be targeted at forces in power and the established institution of society, often in a sensationalist and tabloid manner.
The term muckraker is most usually associated with a group of American investigative reporters, novelists and critics from the late 1800s to early 1900s, but also applies to contemporary persons who follow in the tradition of those from that period.
Although the term muckraking might appear to have negative connotations, muckrakers have most often sought, in the past, to serve the public interest by uncovering crime, corruption, waste, fraud and abuse in both the public and private sectors. In the early 1900s, muckrakers shed light on such issues by writing books and articles for popular magazines and newspapers such as Cosmopolitan, The Independent, and McClure's.
An example of a contemporary muckraker work is Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) and one of the more well known from the early period is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, (1906) which, respectively, led to reforms in automotive manufacturing and meat packing in the United States. Some of the most famous of the early muckrakers are Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker.
The rise of muckraking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries corresponded with the advent of Progressivism yet, while temporally correlated, the two are not intrinsically linked.
Muckrakers
A muckraker is an American English term for one who investigates and exposes issues of corruption that violate widely held values, such as political corruption, corporate crime, child labor, conditions in slums and prisons, unsanitary conditions in food processing plants (such as meat), fraudulent claims by manufacturers of patent medicines, labor racketeering, and similar topics. In British English however the term is applied to sensationalist scandal-mongering journalist, not driven by any social principles.
The term muckraker is most usually associated in America with a group of American investigative reporters, novelists and critics in the Progressive Era from the 1890s to the 1920s. It also applies to post 1960 journalists who follow in the tradition of those from that period. See History of American newspapers for Muckrakers in the daily press.
Muckrakers have most often sought, in the past, to serve the public interest by uncovering crime, corruption, waste, fraud and abuse in both the public and private sectors. In the early 1900s, muckrakers shed light on such issues by writing books and articles for popular magazines and newspapers such as Cosmopolitan, The Independent, Collier's Weekly and McClure's. Some of the most famous of the early muckrakers are Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker.
An example of a contemporary muckraker work is Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) which led to reforms in automotive manufacturing in the United States. Nader's publication led to a stop in the production of the Chevrolet Corvair, one of the first rear-engine American cars. The discontinuation of the Corvair was controversial because many believed the innovative style could have been altered for safety and could have spurred the American automobile industry. The rise of muckraking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries corresponded with the advent of Progressivism yet, while temporally correlated, the two are not intrinsically linked.
History of term muckraker
President Theodore Roosevelt is attributed as the source of the term 'muckraker.' During a speech in 1906 he likened the muckrakers to the Man with the Muckrake, a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678).
While Roosevelt apparently disliked what he saw as a certain lack of optimism of muckraking's practitioners:
- ...the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.
His speech strongly advocated in favor of the muckrakers:
- There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful."
List of muckrakers and their works
Early muckrakers
- Helen Hunt Jackson (1831–1885)—A Century of Dishonor, U.S. policy regarding American Indians
- Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871–1958)—The Great American Fraud, exposed false claims about patent medicines
- Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946)—'Race issues
- Nellie Bly (1864 – 1922) Ten Days in a Mad-House
- Burton J. Hendrick (1870–1949)—"The Story of Life Insurance" May -November 1906 McClure's Magazine
- Frances Kellor (1873-1952)—Studied chronic unemployment in her book "Out of Work"
- Thomas W. Lawson (1857-1924) Frenzied Finance (1906) on Amalgamated Copper stock scandal
- Frank Norris (1870 -1902) The Octopus
- Fremont Older (1856 - 1935) San Francisco corruption and the case of Tom Mooney
- Charles Edward Russell (1860–1941)—investigated Beef Trust, Georgia's prison
- Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)—The Jungle (1906), U.S. meat-packing industry, and the books in the "Dead Hand" series that critique the institutions (journalism, education, etc.) that could but do not prevent these abuses.
- John Spargo, (1876–1966)—American reformer and author, Bitter Cry of Children (child labor)
- Lincoln Steffens (1866 – 1936) The Shame of the Cities (1904)
- Ida M. Tarbell (1857 – 1944) expose, The History of the Standard Oil Company
- Westbrook Pegler (1894–1969)—exposed crime in labor unions in 1940s
- I.F. Stone (1907–1989)—McCarthyism and Vietnam War, published newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly
- George Seldes (1890–1995)—Freedom of the Press (1935) and Lords of the Press (1938), blacklisted during the 1950s period of McCarthyism
- Jessica Mitford (1917–1996)—author of The American Way of Death (US Funeral Industry) and Making of a Muckraker (collection on various topics including writing schools and prisons)
- Casey Swint (1904-1999) - Weekly editor of Atlanta Journal Constitution, wrote Keys to the City (non-fiction book about influence of political bosses on Atlanta politics). Early Civil Rights advocate.
Contemporary muckrakers
- Wayne Barrett—investigative journalist, senior editor of the Village Voice; wrote on mystique and misdeeds in Rudy Giuliani's conduct as mayor of New York City, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 (2006)
- Richard Behar—investigative journalist, two-time winner of the 'Jack Anderson Award'. Anderson himself once praised Behar as "one of the most dogged of our watchdogs"
- Barbara Ehrenreich—journalist and author - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
- Juan Gonzalez (journalist)—investigative reporter, columnist in New York Daily News; authored book on Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush administration's handling of the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and illnesses from Ground Zero dust: Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse (2004)
- Amy Goodman—broadcast journalist, host of Pacifica Network's program Democracy Now!
- John Howard Griffin (1920–1980)—white journalist who disguised himself as a black man to write about racial injustice in the south
- Seymour Hersh—My Lai massacre, Israeli nuclear weapons program, Henry Kissinger, the Kennedys, 2003 invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib abuses
- Malcolm Johnson—exposed organized crime on the New York waterfront
- Kevin Keating—director and producer of Giuliani Time, the 2006 documentary on the career of Rudy Giuliani
- Jonathan Kwitny (1941–1998)—wrote numerous investigative articles for the The Wall Street Journal
- Stephen Mayne—shareholder-activist and founder of crikey.com.au
- Joshua Micah Marshall - writer and journalist, operates the muckraking blog TPM Muckraker, responsible for helping to break the 2006-2007 US Attorney firing scandal, the Duke Cunningham corruption case and others.
- Mark Crispin Miller—professor and writer; has written on 2000 and 2004 contested elections
- Michael Moore—documentary filmmaker, director of Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 911, and SiCKO
- Ralph Nader—consumer rights advocate; Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), exposed unsafe automobile manufacturing
- Allan Nairn—Dili Massacre, US backing of Haitian death squad FRAPH
- Jack Newfield—muckraking columnist; wrote for New York Post; and wrote The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania[about Rudy Giuliani] (2003) and other titles
- Greg Palast—politics and elections issues, Exxon Valdez, corporate crime, corruption
- John Pilger—award-winning war correspondent, film maker and author
- Geraldo Rivera—exposed abuse of mentally retarded patients, led to reforms
- Eric Schlosser—author of Fast Food Nation, an exposé of fast food in American culture
- Morgan Spurlock—American Filmmaker; exposed through example the dangers of McDonalds in his documentary Super Size Me
- Studs Terkel—Legendary Chicago writer, journalist, DJ, and historian
- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005)—American journalist and author credited with the invention of gonzo journalism
- Gary Webb (1955–2004)—investigated Contra-crack cocaine connection, published as Dark Alliance (1999)
- Gary Weiss—exposed the Mob on Wall Street, described by Barron's Magazine as "an old-time gumshoe, with a soupçon of little-guy champion Jimmy Breslin and a dash of 1950s bad-boy comic Lenny Bruce"
- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—breakthrough journalists for Washington Post on the Watergate scandal; authors of All the President's Men, non-fiction account of the scandal
Roosevelt Speech Reference Note
Theodore Roosevelt Describes the Muckrakers, 1906
"In Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.
In "Pilgrim's Progress" the Man with the Muckrake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.
There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.
- Source: The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, Condensed from the Original Edition, Supplemented by Letters, Speeches, and Other Writings, Wayne Andrews editor (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913, rep. 1958) pages 246-247...
External links
- Project Gutenberg - Classic muckraker texts and magazines including issues of McClure's.
- The Center for Investigative Reporting- describes itself as "a nonprofit news organization dedicated to exposing injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism."
- The Center for Public Integrity - nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization that conducts investigative research and reporting on public policy issues in the United States and around the world.
- What Do The World and People Deserve? Len Bernstein on the Life and Work of Jacob Riis
Princeton Online Library - Muckraker
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