muckrakers

Cultural  

1. Authors who specialize in exposing corruption in business, government, and elsewhere, especially those who were active at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Some famous muckrakers were Ida M. Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair. President Theodore Roosevelt is credited with giving them their name.

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Example Sentences

In the early 1900s, journalism, the muckrakers, became highly influential, raising awareness about many social ills, including child labor, unsafe working conditions and unsanitary food processing.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 2, 2025

Local muckrakers seem to keep their eyes peeled for sinister colors at construction sites.

From Slate • Apr. 19, 2022

His Watergate reporting, with Bob Woodward at The Washington Post, brought down a presidency and inspired a generation of muckrakers.

From New York Times • Jan. 5, 2022

Most importantly, it was the birth of muckrakers and truth-tellers and storytellers who came to the fore.

From Salon • Sep. 17, 2018

Only the stupidest muckrakers could fail to see this, and even to know it as part of their own consciousness.

From Back to Methuselah by Shaw, Bernard