Yes, I.F. is on a soapbox again...

“"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”" -- Matthew 5:13, The Bible (KJV)

I read this passage in my morning devotional reading. Although I realize that Jesus employed these words as a metaphor for Christian witness, I couldn'’t help but think about these verses in relation to my recent reading of Roger Streitmatter's excellent book, Mightier Than the Sword.

Salt.

It’s a preservative. It’s a purifying element.

Salt is also painful. Who hasn’t heard the saying-–cum–-cliché “rubbing salt into a wound”?

At it’s best, the Fourth Estate offers more than just a simple recitation of the facts of an event. It digs deeper. It lets the public know the implications of the events. It interprets what the event means to the average person in the street. It doesn’t wait for the story to come to them, it goes off in search of the story.

Just like salt, at certain critical points in this nation’s history, the press has functioned as a preservative of the American ideals of freedom and justice. Just like salt, brave newspaper and magazine reporters have used the power of the press to purify bad elements out of society. Just like salt, the social upheavals caused by the media’s exposure of the injustices of big business hasn’t come without its share of pain.

Although this country has always had its share of crusading journalists, many people consider their golden age to be the first dozen years or so of the twentieth century. At the turn of the century, the American Dream seemed only to be benefiting the rich and big business interests always seemed to be holding all the cards.

Sound familiar?

Into this landscape of injustice and corruption stepped a group of brave men and women journalists that came to be known as the Muckrakers. The origin of the unique moniker is explained in Streitmatter’'s book:

"The term that ultimately came to define this journalistic phenomenon was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt, who led the larger reform movement that the journalists helped to spark. During the Progressive Era, government attempted to reassert its control of business through myriad new agencies and regulations. The youthful and buoyant Roosevelt supported journalistic reform, but in one of the volatile moments that defined his personality he lashed out at the crusaders for finding nothing good about society but looking constantly at the negative elements -- as if raking muck. The epithet took hold, and the golden age of reform journalism became known as muckraking."

Muckraking is sometimes confused with yellow journalism. This is incorrect, although there are some similarities. Both chose topics that appealed to common working people. Both employed an emotionally engaging style of writing. Both paid off big in the circulation wars between newspapers and magazines. But the muckrakers were accurate in their reporting, something to which the yellow journalists could never lay claim. Yellow journalism also tended to emphasize lurid stories as an end unto itself. Although sordid details were also a crucial element to the crusaders’ writing, muckraking appealed to something higher.

It demanded change and got it.

Lincoln Steffens investigated the runaway corruption in city and state governments and the adoption of the city–manager form of government is a lasting monument to his writing. Ida Tarbell acted out a contemporary David and Goliath story with the Standard Oil Company. The fruits of her labor are still felt today through the many public works of the Rockefeller Foundation, a charitable trust which was set up as nothing more than a savvy public relations move. Ray Stannard Baker chronicled the abuse of power through labor unions and ousted corrupt leaders in the process. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle shocked the public with unsanitary conditions in food plants and poisonous ingredients in medicines. The nation’s outrage paved the way for the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906.

What would our lives be like today if the crusaders hadn’t shined a spotlight into the dark corners of America?

I sometimes wish they would return.

Think about it: We moan about our dependence on foreign oil when in reality most of what we use comes from our own soil. Elected officials consistently vote down school vouchers while sending their kids to private schools. The USA thinks its the policeman of the world. And since people don’t see any of this on the evening news, none of the situations exist.

Muckraking was a unique win-win situation for publishers where public service and earning a profit peacefully coexisted. There’s no doubt that the stories sold newspapers and magazines. But they also made America a better place.

I don’t think that balance could be maintained today as the media itself -- AOL/Time Warner, Disney/ABC/go.com, MS-NBC -- is the monopoly that needs reformed. And just try printing or airing anything controversial when everyone on the fringe left or the religious right is so willing to protest the advertisers who are footing the bill.

The Fourth Estate sells us all of us short when it’s satisfied with glossing over stories in a detached fashion.

Because there’s nothing worse than salt that’s lost it savour.