Why we need muckrakers today

Michael Calderone of The Huffington Post writes about the need of muckraking journalism today to let the world know about income inequality.

Calderone writes, “Starkman gives high marks to Michael Hudson, now a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and The Financial Times’ Gillian Tett, for raising concerns about the subprime market and collateralized debt obligations before they were headlines and hashed out on cable chat shows.

“Starkman, who edits Columbia Journalism Review’s “The Audit” blog, has written about the similarities between investigative reporters of the early 21st century and their forbearers a century earlier.

“‘What industry concentration was to the muckrakers’ era, financialization is to ours,’ he wrote. ‘Both phenomena were equally baffling to the literate citizen. Both demanded an explanation. Both had been brewing for decades. Both were marked by institutionalized lawlessness perpetrated by increasingly brazen brand-names. Both were widely known among legislators, clerks, cops, bartenders, and prostitutes — just not the public.'”

Read more here.