BIG SQUEEZE, THE

Today, the term "muckraking" conjures up the image of a strident, self-serving gadfly with a megaphone and a movie camera who can't clap his trap and who wishes to intrude upon the right of all good citizens to amuse themselves to death. But this semantic shift is a great disservice to the assiduous journalists of the early 20th century who saw their painstaking efforts denounced by Theodore Roosevelt. The early muckrakers were committed to serving the public interest and even managed to change a few things. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to the passage of numerous food inspection acts. Ida Tarbell's tireless investigations into Standard Oil helped kick start a famous 1911 Supreme Court ruling that busted trusts as intensely as the 26th president.