Week 5: Assignment and Student Response to Discussion One and Two

ThursdayNov 2 at 7:26pm

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My definition of a muckraker is a person who refuses to allow the sludge of life to quietly settle unnoticed.

Matt Drudge comes to mind when I think of the term. Drudge is not really a reporter or a journalist, and does not claim to be. Drudge is a political commentator that falls on the conservative side.

In 1998, however, it was Drudge that broke the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinski sex scandal story on his online news aggregation site, the Drudge Report..

Drudge's report is an example of the simple muckraking model. He discovered the story, published it, along with an accusation that Newsweek was suppressing the story that was supposed to appear in the magazine. The public picked up on the issue, leading to legal action against Clinton. Drudge wrote, "The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication", (Drudge, 1998, Par 2).

The refual of Newsweek to publish Isikoff's story is an example of another type of muckraking, referred to as truncated muckraking. The story would not have been released at all, if left up to Newsweek, because of the risk of publishing something so potentially damaging (Graber & Dunnaway, 2015).

The other form of muckraking mentioned in out textbook is leaping impact muckraking, where officials act without a public outcry (Graber & Dunnaway, 2015).

Cindy Harthorne

Drudge, M. (1998, January 17). 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT . Retrieved November 2, 2017, from http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/01/17/20020117_175502_ml.htm (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Graber, D. A., & Dunnaway, J. (2015). Mass Media and American Politics (Ninth ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.