The Man with the Muckrake: Main Idea
The Man with the Muckrake: Main Idea
Journalists and the American Mood; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Telling People to Stop Worrying
Teddy Roosevelt's really calling for self-policing among journalists, as much as the speech makes a show of condemning corrupt corporate Monopoly Man interests. Deep down he's holding a fear that the media's helping to foster a widespread bad mood over America.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, right?
Between all of the exposés of political corruption, big corporations eclipsing all of the competition, and the constant flare-ups of violence in the labor movement, things look pretty bleak already. It's a really dark time, and with newspapers constantly publishing one exposé after another, people might just flat-out lose hope.
On the surface, TR's asking journalists to stop slanderous attacks, but certain passages hint at his underlying message: newspapers need to tone it down on the darkness overall. After all, there's more than enough darkness to go around.
Questions
- Why target journalists? What kind of journalists is Teddy Roosevelt addressing in particular?
- Who does he believe is capable of good?
- What does he think is the one dividing line in society?
- What social issue should the government make its main concern?
Chew On This
Roosevelt, as Mr. Prez, is trying to steer a pretty new proverbial ship in American history—the organized press. Mass media is really emerging in the 20th century as a possible tool to sway hearts and minds, and the government is becoming increasingly aware of how the press can move the public.
Teddy Roosevelt's condemnation of all evil acts as the same might work better in theory than in practice…because a corrupt business has a lot more power to flex than a corrupt worker does. A corrupt exec can bend the ear of Washington, while a worker has nowhere close to that kind of power to leverage.
Quotes
Quote #1
There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil. (12-13)
Does Teddy Roosevelt mean to imply that, in order to safeguard themselves from being forces of evil, an investigative journalist should take some time every once and a while to report on a county fair or something? Should a journalist's focus be on the content of their pieces, or on the mood they create?
Quote #2
Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price. (27)
Here TR's basically implying that if people think that every CEO is a complete monster, no honest man would want to become a CEO, so all CEOs would continue to be bad people because no good person in their right mind would want to be a CEO. It's a pretty neat logic loop, right?
Quote #3
If the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral color blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are all gray. (35)
Teddy Roosevelt's worldview in a nutshell. There is absolute good and evil in the world, and no shades of gray. That's…kind of intense.
Quote #4
In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offense; it becomes well nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrongdoing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men. (37)
Hopelessness turns into inaction, and inaction ensures that the terrible conditions get to continue. The relationship between mood and action is a recurring theme in this speech.
Quote #5
So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life. (56)
Discontent has to turn into action—otherwise it isn't useful toward fixing anything. We're probably familiar with this dynamic in our own lives.