muckrake

plural muckrakes

1. A rake for scraping up dung.

present singular third person muckrakes · participle present muckraking · participle past muckraked · past muckraked

1. intransitiveTo search for and expose corruption or scandal, especially as a form of investigative journalism.

   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.

   2020 September 24, Alex Williams, “The Ugly (and Glorious) Truth About American Supermarkets”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 07 Oct 2020

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   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.

   1914, Upton Sinclair, Sylvia's Marriage