Muckrakers and early twentieth-century investigative journalism reform

¶ … Muckrakers

A group of journalists emerged, during the early twentieth century, who were committed to exposing the social, economic, and political ills of industrial life, and in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dubbed them the "muckrakers" (Muckrakers pp). The name comes from John Bunyan's story, Pilgrim's Progress, which told of a man with a "muck-rake in his hand" who raked filth rather than look up to nobler things (Muckrakers pp).

Muckraking emerged from two developments of the era, a changing journalism and the impulse of reform (Muckraking pp). Distinct from earlier journalist who wrote polemical, sensationalized news, muckrakers were a new class of educated reporters who saw themselves as scientists objectively reporting the conditions and ills of modern industrial society (Muckrakers pp). They focused their articles on business and political corruption, such as Standard Oil, scandals in city and state politics, the horrors of the meat-packing industry, insurance and stock manipulation, the exploitation of child labor, slum conditions, and racial discrimination (Muckrakers pp). During the years from 1902 to 1912, well over a thousand such articles were published in magazines that specialized in the genre, such as McClure's, Everybody's, and Collier's (Muckrakers pp). These articles sparked moral indignation among middle-class Americans, and rallied public support for several federal regulatory measures, including the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Hepburn Act (Muckrakers pp).