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The noble journalistic profession of muckraker emerged from the ooze on April 14, 1906, at the laying of the cornerstone for the House of Representatives Office Building, when President Theodore Roosevelt denounced it: "The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone."

Roosevelt's listeners knew exactly what he meant, but for a modern audience his words require explanation. A muckraker is one whose job is to rake up fresh manure. The "man with a muckrake" is a famous character in Part II of John Bunyan's allegorical Pilgrim's Progress, a bestseller since it was first published in 1684. During the pilgrim's journey, a man named the Interpreter shows "a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered to give him that crown for his muck-rake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor...it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men's minds, quite carry their hearts away from God."

Roosevelt was annoyed with writers like Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and Ida Tarbell who exposed corruption and greed in government and business. Or rather, he was pleased when they exposed his enemies and annoyed when they exposed his friends. Muckraker was intended to smear the crusading writers, but they adopted the term as a badge of honor and kept on with what we nowadays would call investigative reporting.