The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination of advertising boycotts, dirty tricks and patriotism, the movement, associated with the Progressive Era in the United States, came to an end.

Before World War I, the term "muckraker" was used to refer in a general sense to a writer who investigates and publishes truthful reports to perform an auditing or watchdog function. In contemporary use, the term describes either a journalist who writes in the adversarial or alternative tradition or a non-journalist whose purpose in publication is to advocate reform and change.^{[citation needed]} Investigative journalists view the muckrakers as early influences and a continuation of watchdog journalism.^{[citation needed]}

The term is a reference to a character in John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, "the Man with the Muck-rake" that rejected salvation to focus on filth. It became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in a 1906 speech.

Ida Minerva Tarbell (November 5, 1857 – January 6, 1944) was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was known as one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era, work known in modern times as "investigative journalism". She wrote many notable magazine series and biographies. She is best known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company, which was listed as No. 5 in a 1999 list by New York University of the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism. She became the first woman to take on Standard Oil. Her direct forerunner was Henry Demarest Lloyd. She began her work on The Standard after her editors at McClure's Magazine called for a story on one of the trusts.

Tarbell was born in the village of Hatch Hollow in Amity Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania on November 5, 1857. She was born in a log cabin that was the home of her maternal grandfather, Walter Raleigh McCullough, a Scots-Irish pioneer. She grew up in the western region of the state, where new oil fields were developed in the 1860s. She was the daughter of Esther Ann (née McCullough) and Franklin Summer Tarbell, a teacher and a joiner by trade, who used his trade to build wooden oil storage tanks.

George Seldes (/ˈsɛldəs/ SEL-dəs; November 16, 1890 in Alliance Colony, New Jersey – July 2, 1995 in Windsor, Vermont) was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece.

Influenced by Lincoln Steffens, his career began when he was nineteen years old and was hired at the Pittsburgh Leader. In 1914, he was appointed night editor of the Pittsburgh Post.

In 1916, he went to the United Press in London and, starting in 1917, during World War I, he moved to France to work at the Marshall Syndicate. While there, he interviewed Paul von Hindenburg, the supreme commander of the German Army. Hindenburg commented on the defeat of Germany in the war, including U.S. involvement; however this interview was censored by the U. S. military. Seldes would later comment that the publishing of this interview could have avoided the rising of the Nazis to power and, thus, World War II.

After World War I, he spent ten years as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. In 1922, he interviewed Vladimir Lenin and, in 1923, got expelled from the Soviet Union, along with three colleagues, for disguising news reports as personal letters; a letter his publisher wrote for the Soviets only facilitated his expulsion. The newspaper then sent him to Italy, where he reported on opposition leader Giacomo Matteotti's murder, implicated Benito Mussolini in Matteotti's death, and was again expelled.

Morgan Valentine Spurlock (born November 7, 1970) is an American documentary filmmaker, humorist, television producer, screenwriter, bounty hunter and political activist, best known for the documentary film Super Size Me. Spurlock was the executive producer and star of the reality television series 30 Days.

Spurlock was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and was raised in Beckley, West Virginia. He was raised a Methodist. He went to New York University and graduated in 1993 and is a member of the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta.

Spurlock has stated that he is of Scottish and Irish descent.

Spurlock attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley, West Virginia, graduating in 1989. He graduated with a BFA in film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. Before making the 2004 Academy Award nominated Super Size Me, Spurlock was a playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. He also created I Bet You Will for MTV. I Bet You Will began as a popular Internet webcast of five-minute episodes featuring ordinary people doing stunts in exchange for money. Examples include eating a full jar of mayonnaise ($235USD), eating a "worm burrito" ($265USD), and taking shots of corn oil, Pepto-Bismol, lemon juice, hot sauce, cold chicken broth, and cod liver oil (US$450.00 for all nine shots). The webcast was a success, with over a million hits in the first five days.^{[citation needed]} The show was later bought and aired by MTV.