Who were the Muckrakers and do We Still Need Them? (Lincoln, economic)

[John Walmsley]

I recently thought about the origin of the term "muckraker." The word is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt who first used it in 1906 to describe writers of the era -- from about 1890 to 1930 -- who pointed out what they saw as social and political injustices. Roosevelt coined the word muckraker from a description given in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" of people who never looked up but aimlessly raked the muck beneath their feet. Although Roosevelt deplored the need for exposing social and political evils of the day, it's said that he approved if the findings were truthful.

One of the first writers of the genre was Nelly Bly who wrote of patient abuse at the Bellevue Mental Hospital. Others followed, such as Lincoln Steffins who exposed political corruption in St Louis; Ida Tarbell was a long-time critic of Standard Oil Company and it's business practices; Upton Sinclair's sensational book The Jungle was an expose' of deplorable conditions in the meat-packing industry; and Ray Stannard Baker wrote serial articles on dangerous and extreme working conditions in the nation's coal-mines.

Some questions that I thought about:

1. Did the muckraker's work bring eventual reforms?

2. Do investigative reporters of today fill the same role of the muckrakers?

3, Are there any Edward R. Murrows or Rachel Carsons today?

[CAVA1990]

Fox News' exposure of Obama's socialist plot?

[j_k_k]

We have muckrakers today. They're called Mother Jones magazine, which in my view usually does a pretty good job. Unfortunately, magazine readership is down far enough that MoJo actually has ongoing beg-a-thons of its subscribers to send in extra money.

The serious question, in my view, is not do we need muckrakers; I believe we always do. The serious question is whether anyone would pay them any attention on any topic requiring the slightest complexity of analysis. Thus:

• President caught getting blow job--we'll take all the muck you can rake!
• Corporation manipulates lawmaking, totally counter to public interest--borrrrrrrrrrr-ing.

In short, if it takes two seconds to explain it to Americans, forget it. You can even see it on message boards. Some airhead is constantly reading a couple of one's sentences, adding a few words in his own mind, extrapolating a few more sentences of what he imagines one said, and then mounting a fierce assault on the irrelevant straw man he has created.

Unfortunately, most of the topics muckrakers of today will uncover require more than five seconds of mental resources to grasp, digest and evaluate. That shields them from any possibility that the public will absorb what they say.

[John Walmsley]

J.K.K.,

Thanks for your well-reasoned comments. I couldn't agree more that there is a blase' attitude toward serious inquiry into corruption and cover up. It's fairly evident by the downward trend of investigative journalism. Except for a few people like Seymour Hersh and Barbara Ehrenreich, it seems to be a dying craft. Probably economics has played a large part as well. Few journals are willing or able to finance a lengthy investigation that has limited interest or readership.