Definition of "muckrake" [muck• rake•rake]

• To search for and expose misconduct in public life. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "HOFFER: And it has a kind of muckrake -- or a sort of -- you know, muckrakers at the beginning of the 20th century were attacking the robber barons, the great industries, for their abuses, the way they abused their workers, they way they abused public trust, and so on."
• "It is neither our purpose nor our desire merely to "muckrake" Pittsburg or any other city."
• "The noun "muckrake" (literally, a rake for "muck," i.e., manure) rose out of the dung heap and into the realm of literary metaphor in 1684."