muckrake

A rake for scraping up dung.

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

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.

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.