What is Muckraker?
1.
muckraker - American journalists and novelists of the first decade of the twentieth century who exposed corruption in big business and government. Theodore Roosevelt invented the term in a 1906 speech, agreeing with some of the muckrakers' findings but deploring the methods as irresponsible sensationalism. He alluded to the "man with a Muck-rake" in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), who could look only downward as he stirred the filth, unable to see the heavenly crown held above him.
Mass circulation magazines such as The Arena, Colliers, Cosmopolitan, Everybody's, The Independent, and McClures financed the investigations and published the work of muckrakers Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, David Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, T.W. Lawson, Mark Sullivan, and Samuel Hopkins Adams. Examples of muckraking novels include: Phillips' Great God Success (1901); Upton Sinclair's Jungle (1901); and the later books of the American Winston Churchill.
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2.
A person who stirs up controversy. Typically by revealing the truth that has been covered up by a person or group.
Michael Moore can be considered the Nation's muckraker with the way he has exposed corporate America to be greedy and corrupt.
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Informal diction used for greeting other "whities"
whaddup muckraker!
