I bet neither of us really planned to be here right now.

In January 2001, I walked into a newsroom for the first time as a real, live newspaper reporter[^1]. In December 2005, I walked out of that same newsroom, headed to law school, having witnessed the collapse of the American newspaper industry and traditional journalism, and the rise of hyper-manipulated corporate media and, soon, the inexplicable era of alternative facts.

My intention when I entered law school was that I would come out a better journalist and return to a media sphere that had properly reformed itself as digital delivery replaced the printing press and fleets of cargo trucks. Instead, it turned into a place where social media posts somehow became replacements for actual reporting, where bad-faith actors pretending to produce legitimate news could push agendas, and where the truth, the thing you could use as a tether even in the most turbulent times, had become malleable and easily distorted.

By the late 2000s, truth wasn’t really truth anymore, because corporate media owners had figured out the thing corrupt politicians already knew[^2]: If they can keep us all yelling at each other, we won’t notice them consolidating wealth and power and enriching themselves off of our government and our tax money. Worse, they knew deep down that if this faux outrage, culture war bullshit worked on television, then just imagine what it could do on this Internet thing once we can weaponize it, feed it into an algorithm, and put it in everyone’s pockets.

Exhale. Man … I was about to say I can feel this is already getting away from me, but someone told me recently I might feel better if I lean into that anger a little more. So, fuck it:

I’m tired of not being able to trust what I read from news organizations that I used to know were legitimate, but I now know are not. I’m tired of being fed outrage, and both-sidesism and agenda-driven stories about whatever topic the jackals have decided best keeps us distracted today. I’m tired of not being able to feel like I’m informed without feeling like I’m subject to someone’s unknown agenda. I’m tired of political parties, partisanship, and being sold what the corporations and oligarchs want me to think under the illusion of freedom and choice. Mostly, I’m tired of our Constitution, one of the most impressive documents ever drafted in human history, being twisted, torn, and made to serve the desires of whatever mutants happen to be in charge at that moment.

I’ll be damned…they were right.

So the work you’ll find here will be unequivocally civic-minded, unapologetically pro-Constitution, and unwaveringly grounded in the belief that the power belongs to the people. My aim here is to remember what we’re capable of when we use our institutions to further the best-case scenarios for all of us, not just the special interests who own our government and our media.

The media plays a critical role in ensuring that our government lives up to the promise of the Constitution that created it, and it is protected because it is the independent eyes, ears, and voice of the people. It's called “The Fourth Estate” because it is as important to our democracy as the three Constitutional branches. It isn’t enshrined in the Constitution because to be most effective, the media must be independent, not just of corporate forces, but of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Its importance, however, is underscored by the fact that the Founders protected it in the First Amendment[^3] despite knowing it couldn't be a formal Constitutional institution.

Today, however, that very machine that was built to be the watchdog for the people, the bulwark against authoritarianism and oligarchy, has been co-opted to serve corporate agendas rather than to honestly inform the people. And if the people aren’t honestly informed, how can they be expected to properly oversee the actions of their government and the corporate barnacles attached to it? Without honest, independent information, Lincoln's government of, by, and for the people not only isn’t possible, but it runs counter to the incentives of the folks in charge.

And that just isn’t acceptable, because the Founders didn’t consider a government of the people, by the people, and for the people to be aspirational. It was a guiding principle. A direction. It was a warning.

They were rejecting tyranny, sure. They were rejecting the notion of a king, definitely. But you know what is more crushingly tyrannical than a king? An entire governmental apparatus that is susceptible to hijacking by forces operating in bad faith[^4].

And if those who control it can seize its power out of the hands of the people? If those forces can conspire to make us believe we have choices when we really don’t? To make us believe that it's our neighbors and us who are the problem when we really aren’t? To make us believe that the things we see with our very own eyes are not true?

Then look out, Bubba[^5], because some of these rotten bastards will run the whole thing off the rails if it means more money or power for them on the way down.

But our government’s power belongs to the people. The folks who wield it on our behalf are mere participants. Good government relies on those participants acting in good faith, but when they don’t, it relies on the citizenry having the tools, clarity, and information to take matters into their own hands. The experiment fails when the people entrusted to exercise its power act in bad faith, when information comes with an agenda attached, and when outrage and divisiveness become our stock-in-trade.

If those are your things, well, there are plenty of places you can get them. I hope you’ll visit here sometimes too.

The word “Muckraker” has had slightly different meanings over the years. The definition I prefer describes a publication that investigates and discovers corruption in public institutions. At The Muckraker, we’re interested in the ways that groups of politicians, corporations, and media sycophants have conspired to corrupt the very institutions the Founders created to protect us from the people we elect in the first place.

The Muckraker exists to document how power actually works, not how it’s marketed and sold. The bad actors try to make things the way they want by selling us the illusion of choice. They gerrymander. They merge corporate power and influence. They funnel ungodly sums of money through benign-sounding political action committees and think tanks. They make it so that no matter what choice we make, the potted plants in Congress and the corporate overlords line their pockets.

We want to pull back the curtain to consider how things were designed, whether they are actually working to their potential, and whether there is something we can do about the ones that aren’t. And while we intend to operate as a place open to any interested citizen, we do not intend to operate as a place that is neutral about democracy, human dignity, the rule of law, or the truth. We will operate this publication with an obligation to accuracy, context, and the reader’s intelligence, and not to specific outcomes, going viral, culture wars, or partisan advantage. We won't tell you who is to blame. We'll let you read the history and receipts and decide for yourselves.

So, if there’s a call to action here, this is it: Please use what you find at The Muckraker to take YOUR power back from those who would use it or give it away merely to enrich themselves. That's what we are setting out to be. A government manual. A structural accountability lab. A place where we can figure out where our representatives gave away our power to executives, corporations, or party bosses, and then find the tools to take it back.

With that in mind, here is our roadmap while we get going:

Our publishing rhythm will be the same now as when our paid tier launches: Mondays will be Dispatches from Muckraker Lab, our weekly preview, and a look at the news as it relates to that week's topic.

On Fridays in the summer, before our paid content launches in the fall, we will run a series of what we consider our foundational information, the stuff you need to know for everything else that follows to make the most sense. The first series will focus on American Journalism and its role in democracy. The second series will be a review of our Constitution from its design to its interpretation. The summer will conclude with an Administrative Law Explainer, an overview of executive agencies, their Constitutional authority, and their function.

Once those foundational pieces are in place, our paid tier will launch in September with the first deep dive in our Know Your Federal Agency series.

When I left that newsroom in 2005, I wondered whether, if nothing else, a legal education would make me a better journalist. It’s taken a little longer to get back here than I thought it would, but, Citizens, it looks like we’re about to find out the answer together.

Welcome to The Muckraker. No corporations. No political parties. No bullshit.

This Week’s Echoes from Muckraker Lab:

Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman - Battle Hymns

Josh Ritter - Henrietta, Indiana

Ren - Money Game Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

If you'd like to know more about who we are and why we're here, visit the About page. For a look at what's coming and how The Muckraker operates, the How It Works page has the full picture. Our first Dispatches from Muckraker Lab publishes Monday, May 25, and our first foundational series begins Friday, May 29.

Footnotes

[^1]: Basically, kids, newspapers were these giant rolls of paper, and we would use them to build entire pages - we called them broadsheets - of news across different categories and sections, and then we would put the giant rolls of paper on this thing called a press that made hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies of all of these sections put together, and then they would be delivered to your house, or to the rack at local stores, and you could read them over the course of 24 hours and really digest the news before the next one came out the next day, and then when the next one came out you could use the old one to start a fire or wrap a fish or something if you wanted to. Let’s see you do THAT, Google.

[^2]: Or maybe the corrupt politicians figured out what the corporate media owners already knew. Actually, either one would imply they weren’t working together, and since I can’t exactly rule that out, let’s just agree that they both know it at this point and move on.

[^3]: More to come in future editions.

[^4]: When the American government can be wielded like a seized Boeing in the 1970s, it is apparent, at least to this news junkie, that we have officially and completely lost the plot.

[^5]: It’s a tick, ok? Probably a remnant of too much rum and Hunter S. Thompson in college, but it is going to slip in here from time to time, and we’re all just going to have to be ok with that. Also, “Bubba” is gender-neutral here at The Muckraker, as it should be everywhere. If you have a problem with that, I refer you to our complaint department.