Muckrakers Case

In the introduction to her book Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking, investigative journalist Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) confronts, and eventually revels in, accusations that she is a "muckraker." At the beginning of the 20th century Theodore Roosevelt coined the term "muckraker" as a "journalist who goes too far in the search of their stories." Today, "muckraker" is more commonly used to describe a journalist who "exposes real or apparent misconduct of a prominent individual or business." With the second definition Mitford gladly accepted the title "Queen of the Muckrakers." Mitford should see it as an honor to be deemed so, though journalists who search out and expose real or apparent misconduct go too far in the pursuit of their stories can still take things too far.

Mitford should be proud to be called a muckraker today, as the definition/connotation has changed. I'm sure maybe 60 years ago she would not have accepted, but if someone had called her a "bad ass" she probably wouldn't have been thrilled either. As a culture changes, the language the culture uses changes also. By the definition Mitford gave, being a "muckraker" is almost heroic, and the society we live in today welcomes this type of people.

Mitford also gladly accepted the title after she defined what the word meant. Well golly, I'd gladly be called a "murderer" if I defined it to mean someone "killing it" in the slang sense as if to be doing really well at something, but I would never want to be called "murderer" in the Biblical sense. It is very easy to accept titles you have defined yourself, because you can tailor the title to mean whatever you want. She didn't accept the title "Queen of the Muckrakers" when the term "muckraker" was first coined because it had a negative connotation. Even now the dictionary defines "muckraking" as "the act of searching out and publicizing scandalous information about famous people in an underhanded way." Who would want a negative connotation?

There are still negative connotations to the word, however, and for good reason. It was yellow journalism that helped cause the Spanish-American War, otherwise known as the first media war. William Randolph Hurst, looking for any competitive advantage against Joseph Pulitzer, published dramatized stories of Cuba in the 1890s that would "tug on America's heart strings" and keep them begging for more. Stories about women and children being mistreated happened to make their way back to Hurst's reporters and into his paper. It wasn't until the sinking of the battleship Maine in the Havana Harbor, however, that Hurst got his biggest story of all. Blaming the Spanish without a single fact, the paper published stories of going to war that did more than bring in paying customers, it rallied our country into wanting to take action. Eventually, the US did, causing near 3,000 lives and $250,000.

The true reason for conflicting connotations lies in the ambiguity of the word "misconduct" in the definition of "muckraker." "Misconduct" is defined as "unacceptable or improper behavior," but even "unacceptable" and "improper" are ambiguous and left up to personal or societal interpretation. I do want to know if Bell city officials are corrupt and cheating people out of money, but I don't care if Britney Spears is on drugs. The fact that there is still a great concentration of ambiguity after continually defining terms makes it understandable how the definition of muckraker has made a 180-degree turn from its original definition.

The question is whether or not we have the right to look deeper into the lives of prominent people or businesses than we have permission too. Is it morally right to invade someone's privacy, something protected by the Bill of Rights? Well, the amendment only protects privacy

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