What are some negatives about Muckrakers in the 19th/20th centuries????

Question

Some real-life events + examples would help greatly, such as lying muckrakers and fake negative press.

Thanks, but I only need *negative* facts - things that they lied about, etc.
I already have enough positive facts for this report.

Answer 1

There was more true negative press than false. The muck included things like what disgusting cow parts were put into ground meat and sausages and how many women had eye damage from coal-tar based cosmetics. That is why laws were passed to try to prevent those kinds of abuses. Try reading Upton Sinclair for some specifics of true muck.

Answer 2

Since the 1870s there had been recurrent efforts at reform in government, politics, and business, but it was not until the advent of the national mass-circulation magazines such as McClure’s, Everybody’s, and Collier’s that the muckrakers were provided with sufficient funds for their investigations and with a large enough audience to arouse nationwide concern. All aspects of American life interested the muckrakers, the most famous of whom are Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, David Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Upton Sinclair. In the early 1900s magazine articles that attacked trusts—including those of Charles E. Russell on the beef trust, Thomas Lawson on Amalgamated Copper, and Burton J. Hendrick on life insurance companies—did much to create public demand for regulation of the great combines. The muckraking movement lost support in about 1912. Historians agree that if it had not been for the revelations of the muckrakers the Progressive movement would not have received the popular support needed for effective reform.