Be a “Muckraker,” and Become Proud Complainant of Society

                          

        

                           It is true that when U.S president Theodore Roosevelt firstly used the terminology “muckraker” in his speech, this newly appeared word seemed a bit negative. The etymology of this term supports the bad nuance the word conveys to the listeners. It is consists of muck and raker, which means a person who rakes dirty things endlessly. And it is truly an endless task for muckrakers to collect the corrupted images and hidden facts in our society, so the public can figure out what is going wrong now in the politics and businesses. Muckraker journalists try to unmask the dirtiest parts of our society, and it seems some of them including Jessica Mitfold are even proud of being called as muckraker. In fact, these kinds of situations are hard to understand directly, since the word “muckraker” itself sounds dirty, and also there are lots of opinions which believe muckraking is not an healthy thing to do, like that of president Roosevelt. However, from much broader perspective the muckraking should be recognized as an indispensible factor to make cleaner and healthier society, and better world for all of us. What muckrakers do is maybe one of the most courageous ways to expose the corruption, and to eradicate the unreasonableness in politics and businesses, where the people with ‘power’ frequently cheat and squeeze the public for their own profits.

                  Ironically, the best way for us to desperately feel the needs of social muckraking journalists is to figure out certain periods when people of ‘power’ initially banned the activity of any muckrakers. In these cases, almost every society with no muckraking was controlled by authoritarian regime or totalitarian rules. As the history teaches us, those political backgrounds harm the transparency of politics and business, and restrain the most basic freedoms of civilians. Then, together with other rights in common civil society, reporting the wrong and even tragically designed parts of political organization, or easily ‘muckraking,’ is also expelled from society. The military regime of South Korea from 1970 to 1980 is a precise example of certain period. During this era, there was a coup by Jeon, who was just a military official in that time. Unfortunately this coup succeeded along the dazed and confused political chaos of South Korea, and Jeon became the most powerful authority in South Korean political society. He became president using unfair, hidden methods in election process, and then military regime which ironically advertised itself as a ‘republic’ by national propaganda started to rule the southern Korean peninsula. Every critical and negative newspaper toward Jeon’s regime was forced to close its door, and similar policy was applied to individual column and report writers. Anyone who said the truth was arrested by national police, and tortured. The fundamental purpose of Jeon’s regime was simple and straightforward: eliminate any bad images of the political elites and the regime originated from military. Koreans couldn’t resist properly to Jeon at that time, because they couldn’t access to the information about their country easily. In public market there were only the Jeon-friendly newspapers which faked the truth, and only the news which broadcasted the justness and ‘divinity’ of Jeon as being president. Although this period ended with the bloody demonstrations in national scale, the lesson it gives is obvious. No muckraking means the fabrication of political images, and it only makes more social confusions which are connected to civilian abuse.

                  Same story can be applied to the field of business. All the more, we can say the muckrakers are more necessary in this area, since every business has its base on the money from common people. So the corruption of certain companies means the unwanted disadvantages for normal people who are related to those businesses directly or indirectly, financially or physically. Because of this, we can say the businesses also have serious duty to keep their transparency, the same as politics do. The examples which support this argument are literally ‘numerous,’ just as many as the number of every individual companies in the world. If one got lots of money, there’s no doubt that his greed would be stimulated. Once stimulated, the greed of human began its endless circle to be satisfied-but it can’t be satisfied eternally, because more money (and thus higher social position with more power) stimulates the greed again and again. Although this argument is not scientifically proved, we can say most of the corruptions in any profit-making group follow similar process. In this situation, muckraking is helpful either for common costumers and corrupted company itself. The shocking reports about unreasonableness inside certain domain of business will embarrass people at first, but it will let common people to have more objective eyes on analyzing the truthfulness of those ‘unmasked’ businesses, and prevent more enormous corruption. If we put this in smaller scale, it’ll be easier to understand the positive effect of muckraking. In my school, there are lots of student clubs which were supported by school administration without uncovering the specific records of money use. The important thing was that those supports for clubs are originated from the regular fees from other students. At first no one had doubted, and followed the policy of club support. We paid what clubs said they need, although sometimes the reason for such huge amount of money requirement was vague. One day, student reporters from official school newspaper secretly observed the use of supporting money by every single club. And the result was very shocking. There were almost no club which spent money only for the proper purpose of club, but many of them just used the money for additional entertainments. The school newspaper reported this on the first page, and everything changed. Now the school administration strictly judges the transparency of student clubs, and provides money based on the specified plan and purpose. Thanks to those student muckrakers, the school could prevent more serious situation. Simply put, we can speak the same thing for bigger scale, international companies. Muckrakers are the people who questioned to the fixation of the public, and they take the risks to be socially attacked by those business authorities only to find out the truth.

                  From the examples of political and economical fields, the necessity of muckraking and also enough number of muckrakers seems to get plausible reason. What muckrakers do is cleaning our society, so taking care of negative parts of important social figures and groups. In this sense, muckraker can have the same meaning with “social complainant.” They find the problems, dig it to utmost level they can reach and then speak ‘uncomfortable truth’ to the public. This truth is what the common people should realize fully to get and keep the civil society. Muckrakers complain about the irrationalities at every corner of society, and convey them through bitter tone. This is why the word “muckraker” does not actually have negative connotation, and the journalists and any others who are called as “muckrakers” should be proud of themselves, as honorable complainant in our world.

02 21 2011 Chang Woo Jung
AP Lang @ KMLA