Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism Around the World

Muckrakers and their published work provide the much needed spark for addressing political corruption, fraud, and bad business practices in America and throughout the world, according to a new book by Schiffrin, the director of the media and communication program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. As digital information rapidly replaces print media, Schiffrin (who also happens to be the daughter of the late André Schiffrin, the New Press founder) revisits some of the published pieces that have sent shock waves through readers, including a telling 1896 exposé of the indentured “coolie” system in the English colonies; a gripping 1904 British story on atrocities in the Congo; a bitter 1924 chronicle of the penal colony Devil’s Island, ; an inflammatory 1986 article on the devastating aftermath of a Chinese earthquake in Tangshan; and a shocking 2013 yarn of a corporation ignoring the men battling chronic kidney disease from working in the sugar cane industry. There are 47 articles by leading journalists, past and present, divided into sections like labor abuses, corruption, anti-colonialism, the environment and natural disasters, famine, military and police, rural life, and women. Looking back, Schiffrin’s impressive survey of the crusading media is essential for those concerned with the business of news and its bold history of courageous messengers. (Aug.)