muckrake

muck +‎ rake

muckrake (plural muckrakes)

1. A rake for scraping up dung.

muckrake (third-person singular simple present muckrakes, present participle muckraking, simple past and past participle muckraked)

1. (intransitive) To search for and expose corruption or scandal, especially as a form of investigative journalism.
   • 1914, Upton Sinclair, Sylvia's Marriage‎:

     To think that he cares about nothing save the possibility of being found out and made ridiculous! All his friends have been ‘muckraked,’ as he calls it, and he has sat aloft and smiled over their plight; he was the landed gentleman, the true aristrocrat, whom the worries of traders and money-changers didn’t concern.

   • 2020 September 24, Alex Williams, “The Ugly (and Glorious) Truth About American Supermarkets”, in New York Times‎:

     His book, published this month, combines the muckraking approach of Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” with the wry travelogue approach of a Michael Moore movie.

• muckraker