muck-raking

Muck-raking is a form of investigative journalism that was popularized during the American Gilded Age. It is characterized by incessant pursuit of ugly truths about business concerns (actual truth value not covered under general warranty; YMMV). The efforts of muck-rakers inspired the intervention of The Government into the economy in order to protect consumers.

Well-known muck-raking works include:

• Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906)
• Ida Tarbell's The Rise of the Standard Oil Company (1902)
• David Graham Phillips' The Treason of the Senate (1906)

• Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's All the President's Men (1974)
• Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (2001)
• Michael Moore's Roger and Me (1989), Bowling for Columbine (2002), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Sicko (2007), and Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
• John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me (1961)