What is muckraking and why was it desperately needed to reform American society?

muckraker, any of a group of American writers, identified with pre-World War I reform and exposé literature. The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States. The name muckraker was pejorative when used by President Theodore Roosevelt in his speech of April 14, 1906; he borrowed a passage from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which referred to “the Man with the Muckrake . . . who could look no way but downward.” But “muckraker” also came to take on favourable connotations of social concern and courageous exposition.

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Chetak

Muckraking is when a journalist exposes someone like business wrong doing. It reformed American society by for example caused new laws to be placed. Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" talks about the awful conditions of the meat in a meat factory, which causes the US government to pass the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act. Ironically, Sinclair wanted the workers conditions to improve which didn't happen till a little later.