AP Lang essay - Muckrakers

Is it honor to be called a "Muckraker?"

           Although President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term ‘muckrakers’ to insult some journalists, many journalists nowadays including Jessica Mitford take the term as a praise. In fact, Muckrakers play an important role in keeping our society clean and just by exposing faults and misconducts of famous individuals or companies. The works of the journalists in digging out the unjust side of the public is, in some ways, what protects the citizen’s freedom and rights in a nation, as shown in the cases of the Watergate scandal, Domino Pizza, and North Korea.

           The Watergate scandal accurately delineates the power of the journalists to correct socially unjust events. President Nixon, who was later on found to be guilty, at first tried to conceal his misconduct by firmly denying his part in the scandal. Because many people who were involved in the scandal were closely related to CIA and FBI, the investigation on Watergate scandal was not very active. However, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalists in Washington post, started their independent research on the scandal, the public started to pay great attention to the incident. With the attention of millions of American citizens, it was nearly impossible for Nixon to evade his guilt. Consequently, when Nixon’s guilt was about to be confirmed, Nixon eventually admitted his misdemeanor and resigned from the presidency.

           Journalists play an important role not only in uncovering an individual’s faults, but also in exposing certain companies’ misconducts. In particular, Domino Pizza decided to annul its “30 minutes delivery” system after the journalists’ criticism on such policy. A couple of days ago, one 18 years old student died while delivering pizza. Later on, when it was found out that the student had to speed up and ignore the traffic light in order to deliver the pizza on time, many journalists criticized pizza companies for exchanging adolescents’ lives for their profits. Such criticisms brought massive responses from the previously indifferent public, and eventually led the companies to abolish the policy that used to risk the deliverers’ lives.

           The crucial role that journalists play on the justice is more clearly shown when we take a look at the case of North Korea: a country where there is no true journalist. Unlike most of the other countries in the world, North Korea is under the dictatorship of Kim Jong-il. Therefore, freedom of journalism is not guaranteed – in fact, the journalists are only allowed to write the articles that praise the meritorious deeds of their dictator, Kim Jong-il. As a result, the citizens have no way to know the serious crime that their leader is perpetrating – many of them firmly believe that North Korea is the best country to live in and that Kim Jong-il is the best leader in the world. Unlike Egypt, where the journalists were at least allowed to write independent articles, the complete blockage of journalism in North Korea left the citizens unaware of their own situation, and led to the sufferings of the North Korean citizens, taking away their freedom and rights.

           It is true that some journalists tend to go too far in the pursuit of their stories. Some reports are frequently found to be exaggerated and even misinformed. Nevertheless, as the aforementioned cases show, the role that journalists play in keeping the society’s justice and people’s rights is so crucial that it should never be overlooked. In this aspect, it is not surprising to know that Jessica was happy to accept the term given to her, “Queen of the muckrakers.” Without the journalists, our situation may not differ so much from that of North Korea.