Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. US One who investigates and exposes issues of corruption that often violate widely held values; e.g. one who exposes political corruption or the poor conditions in prisons.
- n. UK A sensationalist, scandal-mongering journalist, one who is not driven by any social principles.
- n. US, historical One of a group of American investigative reporters, novelists and critics of the Progressive Era (the 1890s to the 1920s)
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A person who habitually muckrakes.
WordNet 3.0
- n. one who spreads real or alleged scandal about another (usually for political advantage)
Etymologies
- Believed to have been coined following a 1906 speech by United States President Theodore Roosevelt, in which he likened the investigative journalist to ‘the Man with the Muck-rake’, a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“He was what they described as a muckraker earlier.”
“Sort of like what the TPM muckraker is to Talking Points Memo.”
“Of the school of earnest young writers at whom the word muckraker had been thrown in opprobrium, and by whom it had been caught up as a title of honor, Everett was among the younger and less conspicuous.”
“And Ida Tarbell, a new kind of journalist -- a prototype of what later would be called a muckraker and later still an investigative reporter -- was preparing to launch a series of excoriating profiles of Rockefeller's business practices that would eventually alter his own fate and his company's.”
“David Graham Phillips, a novelist as well as a muckraking journalist his 1906 Cosmopolitan series on "The Treason of the Senate" inspired Teddy Roosevelt to coin "muckraker" in its journalistic sense had the material element in mind when he wrote in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise:”
The Huffington Post: Hugh Rawson: Chasing the American Dream
“I suppose the "muckraker" guys just can't wait for all the muck a Clinton presidency is guaranteed to bring.”
“Not only does her surprise display a stunning lack of basic education about the history of the very journalism profession she works in (Leslie - please google the terms "muckraker" and "penny press"), her own 60 Minutes piece about Dobbs displays her own very subjective opinions.”
“Bob "muckraker" Woodward was inside the planning rooms in late 2001 when the administration was agitating for the war.”
“Bunyan's "muckraker" lives again; thus, "the curse of Meroz," and many another Bible reference, springs up with a fresh meaning.”
“She loves the image of "muckraker" even though she cannot hold a candle to someone as intelligent as Nancy Mitford.”
OpEdNews - OpEdNews.Com Progressive, Tough Liberal News and Opinion
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘muckraker’.
-
Unsavory characters
absconder, aretaloger, arriviste, avaunter, bamboozler, bandit, banger, barbarian, barmecide, barrator, beldam, blatherskite and 190 more...
-
Amalgamations
Words that have been smashed together.
keystone, touchstone, footprint, thunderhead, seesaw, textbook, leftovers, watchword, afterbirth, fieldwork, outcast, statesman and 148 more...
-
This week's words
hand-handled, crouch, hootchy-kootchy, gloriole, glory hole, metempsychosis, doctrinaire, transmigration, celestial, treetop, luxuriant, physic and 102 more...
-
Writer, Writer!
columnist, contributor, novelist, poet, wordsmith, stringer, freelancer, ghostwriter, journalist, correspondent, essayist, speechwriter and 99 more...
-
Odd-Ball
Just plain fun to say and wonder about their origins.
rapscallion, ramahanukwanzmas, cockamamie, nincompoop, hemidemisemiquaver, antiinterdenomina..., cattywampus, ragamuffin, tatterdemalion, blunderbuss, brobdingnagian, tintinnabulation and 127 more...
-
kingrat47's Words
procrustean, devolution, cacophony, hippopotamus, crunch, beware, chortled, sibilant, subtle, undermine, acromegaly, acropolis and 645 more...
-
Words that are fun to say
stipple, carbuncle, dongle, exemplar, misbegotten, gigolo, salubrious, jupiter, propinquity, piglet, tobogganing, supercilious and 309 more...
-
GRE uncommon
patronage, expletive, exhort, exegesis, execrable, excommunicate, evince, escarpment, ersatz, ergo, epoxy, snare and 1202 more...
-
All the Presidents' Words
Words coined or popularized by U.S. presidents.
administration, Brother Jonathan, Jeffersonian, belittle, odometer, public relations, kitchen cabinet, Jacksonian, spoils system, OK, lame duck, teddy bear and 27 more...
-
Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers
A decade-by-decade guide to the vanishing vocabulary of the 20th century. From Rosemarie Ostler's book of the same name.
nickelodeon, ivory tickler, alley-oop, horse opera, gun opera, boffo, boston version, jitney, cakewalk, tin lizzie, automobubbling, shirtwaist and 21 more...
-
Vanity Fair
prefect, acolyte, defection, depredation, pallid, rife, diametric, muckraker, fealty, lapel, vitriolic, fallow and 16 more...
-
eco.kat's list
stealthy, perfunctory, schadenfreude, omnipotent, plethora, california carpool, lookie loo, sojourn, muckraker, peony, dodder, effervescent and 6 more...
-
keep it simple
single words that pique my interest.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for muckraker.

Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.