USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -These Progressive Era journalists were called “muckrakers” because President Teddy Roosevelt accused them of raking the muck (filth) like the character in Pilgrim’s Progress, a religious book written by John Bunyan in the 17th century that became a classic of the genre.

Detailed explanation-2: -The term muckraking was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, describing the crusading journalists who wrote stories in late nineteenth-century publications. Roosevelt took the word from the work The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, written in 1678.

Detailed explanation-3: -Roosevelt disapproved of journalists whom he considered to be so overly focused on the bad that they failed to notice and report on the good. He borrowed the term “muck rake” from the well-known didactic novel, Pilgrim’s Progress, written in the late seventeenth century by John Bunyan.

Detailed explanation-4: -Theodore Roosevelt coined the term “muckraker” during a speech in 1906. He compared investigative reporters to the narrow-minded figure in John Bunyan’s 17th-century religious fable, “The Pilgrim’s Progress": the “man that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand."