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

ThursdayNov 2 at 8:18pm

Manage Discussion Entry

Hi All,

I feel like I have fallen off of the face of the earth with school work. My lil town has had six hit and runs with a fatality, a near fatal stabbing of an 11-yr old and a murder that I have had to cover in the last few day. Oh yeah, I had a standoff with a gun wielding 80-year-old today too. Whew, it is nice to have school stuff to do for a change.

In your own words, what does “muckracking� mean?

It is an article(s) a reporter that investigates an issue, mainly political scandal but not always, in order to expose a truth and affect change (Graber & Dunaway, 2015). Hopefully the public notices it and demands a change or the party that is being exposed does the right thing and makes the changes in advance of public outcry.

What are the specific types of “muckracking�?

There is simple mudraking, where a reporter prints a story and public opinion is formed and policy makers see the publicity and make changes.

There is leaping mudraking where an article is published but the officials go ahead and fix the problem before it becomes a publicity nightmare for them (Graber & Dunaway, 2015).

Last but not least is truncated mudraking where there may not be a set sequence like the other two types. This is sometimes because the article never sees thee light of day (Graber & Dunaway, 2015).

How does the story you chose fit the particular type of “muckracking� you identified? Well, I searched all over and I could only find a couple locally that were done by my paper or by our “local� (3 hours away) news. The problem was that most of them were very old or only had a report and not the end result. I chose an article from Riviera Beach in Palm Beach County. SPECIAL REPORT: Riviera leaders big on credit cards, cars, hotels by Tony Doris.

This was a phenomenal article and must have taken a great deal of time to research and report all the numbers, let alone get quotes. I lived in Palm Beach County my whole life.  To say that it is a rich county is an understatement. That is, with the exception of Riviera Beach. It is mostly a ghetto, I used to have to work there. Doris really exposed the extravagant spending from its town council. They spend much more than the rich neighboring counties on everything-by a lot. In the meantime, 29 percent of the households lives on less than 25 thousand a year and 16 percent live on less than 15 thousand a year (Doris, 2017).

The article tracked their spending on car fees above their allowances and travel expenses in the thousands and credit cards used for personal use (Doris, 2017).

Unfortunately, I do not have a follow-up article to see the public outcry and the outcome. I would think there is backlash coming. The article did explain how some of the expenses were denied but also how the council members approved each other’s spending (Doris, 2017).

I would think that this will end up being a simple mudraking story because it will follow that sequence or a truncated one because the sequence will be broken here and there before a final result is in.

Doris, T. (2017, October 27). SPECIAL REPORT: Riviera leaders big on credit cards, cars, hotels . Retrieved from My Palm Beach Post: http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/special-report-riviera-leaders-big-credit-cards-cars-hotels/3M5xs3cZj93DTcQfmGnfgI/

Graber, D., & Dunaway, J. (2015). Mass Media and American Politics, Ninth Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Electronic Edition.