Muckrakers
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- Muckraking is a type of investigative journalism that flourished in the period of 1902-12 within the scope of Progressivism. It had a counterpart in thenovel of social protest.
- Muckraking journalism, which developed from yellow journalism, was typically concerned with the exposure of abuses, corruption, and injustice in industry and politics. The muckraking novel shared this aim, and was usually written in realist style, with the aim of informing the reader of abuse with a view to reform.
- "The Jungle" (1906) by Upton Sinclair is the exemplary muckraking novel, exposing the exploitation, corrupt and unhygienic practices in Chicago's stockyards. A best-seller, the novel contributed to the reform of laws governing the meat-industry.
- Referring to the group of writers and journalist engaging in muckraking, the term 'muckrakers' derives from a disapproving 1906 speech by Theodore Roosevelt in which he borrowed a term used in John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1684).
