Why called muckrakers

McGerr, Michael. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, All rights reserved. Words related to muckrakers attacker , carper , caviler , censor , complainant , complainer , defamer , disparager , doubter , maligner , nagger , quibbler , scolder , slanderer , vilifier , worrier , zapper , faultfinder , nitpicker , niggler. How to use muckrakers in a sentence Unprincipled attacks are often made on me by political muckrakers.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. The Clarion Samuel Hopkins Adams. Then in the 19th century muckraker had a comeback. The renewed sense is thought to have been influenced by John Bunyan's late 17th century religious allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress , in which a character with a muckrake "a rake for dung, or muck" is perhaps metaphorically preoccupied with muck.

Thou hast said the right, said he, and his Muck-rake doth show his Carnal mind. Yet see him! Like Bunyan's muck raker, he looks down on the earth, and is searching and digging for worldly treasures. Morgan does not, we imagine, profess or feel much popular sympathy,—at least if we may judge from the unfair though powerful attack on the penny press as the gigantic muckraker, who rakes and rakes without ever lifting his head for the crown Truth offers him.

These uses of the word were all decidedly pejorative , and it is unlikely that anyone would call themselves a "proud muckraker. The word was given a considerable boost in , after Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech in which he waxed critical of journalists who exposed corruption. 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 but one of the most potent forces for evil.

The most famous muckrakers in American history are probably Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for their work in exposing the corruption in the Nixon administration. Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Email.