The muckrakers were a group of journalists who typically worked separately, but all fit under the auspices of Teddy Roosevelt’s term because they were the kind of people who would dig and dig for a story even when there really wasn’t anything there or not. They did what they did in order to change the country for the better and for the most part they did. I think it could definitely be said that the muckrakers of the early twentieth century were sort of a precursor to Nader’s Raiders in the 1970’s There were those like Ida Tarbell who wrote her books in order to expose some of the unfair, monopolistic practices of the oil industry that she believed contributed to her father’s downfall and indigence.
Then there were people like Upton Sinclair, who I think started out mostly with the intention to help improve the working conditions in America, but having written something like a thousand books (I haven’t read a new biography on Sinclair called Radical Innocent yet, but I certainly intend to) you’ve got to wonder if he wrote that much if he wasn’t starved for fame himself a little bit.
Then there was of course William Randolph Hearst who would print misleading although maybe necessary stories in order to motivate the American people into believing that conflicts such as the Spanish American War and World War I were he would write about some of the “barbarian” things that the Spaniards were doing to either our forces fighting over there or to their own people. Hearst Newspapers is of course still around and in many cases still trying to locate stories where there aren’t any in my eyes with Helen Thomas leading the charge. Let me just say this about Thomas though, maybe to get off subject a bit if someone can’t tell that Thomas is a liberal you must be inebriated when you read her columns throughout the years.
The same could be said for Dan Rather who spoke at a local Democratic convention in Texas. So my opinion on this is if you really are curious about what somebody’s politics are then just do a little digging yourself, they aren’t going to announce their own persuasions on the air in order to not lose part of their viewer ship. Sure, I agree one hundred percent that journalists do have some sort of social responsibility and I do think a lot of them are just wannabe politicians without the charisma to hold office, but really everything comes down to money no matter what industry a person is in. I know you said one time you would teach for free and I believe you once again, but there aren’t many people out there like that at least that I’ve met in my experience.
Obviously yellow journalism and sensationalism were an element of the writing of many in this era, but once again some writers truly changed the landscape and actually had an impact on elections such as Herbert Croly in the Promise of American Life who basically expressed that society should take a definite shot at building a sustained effort at curing some of the ills of society with pretty extensive social programs. Croly’s work was the inspiration for a lot of the platform that Teddy Roosevelt ran on in 1912 and drew an interesting contrast between the perceived status quo way of doing things with Taft and the seemingly more incremental steps that would be taken under a Wilson Administration with the New Freedom.
Then there’s Joseph Pulitzer and the whole controversy about whether Joe Kennedy cut a deal with him in order to make sure his son won the Pulitzer for Profiles in Courage and then there’s the other question about whether Ted Sorenson wrote the book for Kennedy or at least part of it and of course Sorenson says to this day that such a notion is hogwash. To get back to the point on whether the media is liberal and whether the muckrakers had an agenda that was predicated on class warfare, absolutely they did then and they do now. I recall one discussion that class took place in a Recent U.S. History where it had rightfully mentioned how the media always brought up how conservative John Wayne was in his thinking, but always skipped over the fact Katharine Hepburn had potential ties to communists whenever there was a news story about her.
Well, the reason for this is that finding a conservative who was as successful as John Wayne was in Hollywood is like finding a needle in a haystack and the media mentions it in my view because it took guts for Wayne to stand up on principle because it could have hurt his career. While, you can find hundreds of Hollywood stars with views like Katharine Hepburn’s before you run into another one who agreed with John Wayne. This I think verifies the fact that there has been a liberal bias in the media as a whole since the beginning of early twentith century.
