Muckraker

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For other uses, see Muckraker (disambiguation).

McClure's Magazine (cover, Jan, 1901) published many early muckraking articles.

A muckraker 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.

The term muckraker is most usually associated 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, 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.

[edit] History of term muckraker

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term 'muckraker' in 1906.

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."

[edit] Early muckrakers

• Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958) - The Great American Fraud, exposed false claims about patent medicines
• Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946) - Following the Color Line (1908) on race issues
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) investigated child labor
• Burton J. Hendrick - "The Story of Life Insurance" May -November 1906 McClure's Magazine
• Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885) - A Century of Dishonor, U.S. policy regarding American Indians
• Frank Norris (1870-1902) - McClure's Magazine's war correspondent in Cuba, railroad industry
• Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969), exposed crime in labor unions in 1940s
• David Graham Phillips (1867-1911) - exposed corruption in campaign contributors and Senate
• Jacob August Riis (1849-1914) - early pioneer in investigative journalism, exposed slum conditions
• Charles Edward Russell (1860-1941)- investigated Beef Trust, Georgia's prison system, big-business control of press,
• Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936) - articles in McClure's, the American, and Everybody's magazines on city bosses
• Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) - The Jungle (1906), U.S. meat-packing industry,
• George Seldes (1890-1995) - Freedom of the Press (1935) and Lords of the Press (1938), blacklisted during the 1950s period of McCarthyism.
• John Spargo, (1876–1966) - American reformer and author, Bitter Cry of Children (child labor)
• I.F. Stone (1907-1989) - McCarthyism and Vietnam War, published newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly
• Ida Tarbell (1857–1944) - extensive 19-part investigation of Standard Oil
• 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)

[edit] Contemporary muckrakers

• 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
• 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.
• Jonathan Kwitny (1941-1998), wrote numerous investigative articles for the The Wall Street Journal
• 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.
• 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 - Watergate scandal

[edit] 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...

[edit] Bibliography

• Brian, Dennis. Pulitzer: A Life (2001)
• Campbell, W. Joseph. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (2003), focus on 1898
• Filler, Louis. Crusaders for American Liberalism (1939)
• Kaplan, Richard L. Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865-1920 (2002)
• Nasaw, David. The Chief The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000)
• Stanley K. Schultz. "The Morality of Politics: The Muckrakers' Vision of Democracy," The Journal of American History, Vol. 52, No. 3. (Dec., 1965), pp. 527-547. in JSTOR
• Weinberg, Arthur, and Lila Weinberg. The Muckrakers (1961).

[edit] See also

• History of American newspapers

[edit] 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."
• Run Amuck - An organization dedicated to freelance muckraking via the blogosphere.
• 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