The media played a significant role in pushing for change during the Progressive Era. Journalists who wrote about the corruption of business and public life during the early 20th century became known as muckrakers because they were literally “raking the muck” out into the open for everyone to see. Many photographers and novelists were also considered muckrakers, as they used their talents to expose social problems.Some famous muckrakers include:Jacob Riis, a photographer from Denmark, used the new technology of flash photography to capture images of the unsanitary and overcrowded living conditions of the nation’s poor. His images and stories, published in the book How the Other Half Lives, inspired the passage of the Tenement Housing Act of 1901, which created housing regulations.Lincoln Steffens, a leading figure of the muckraking movement published exposés of business and government and police corruption in McClure’s Magazine and other magazines. These articles were then collected in two books: The Shame of the Cities and The Struggle for Self-Government.Upton Sinclair, a novelist, wrote The Jungle to expose the shocking conditions that immigrant workers endured in Chicago’s meatpacking industry. The public, however, reacted even more strongly to the novel’s revelations of unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry, which prompted a federal investigation that resulted in passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.Ida M. Tarbell, a reporter, wrote “The History of the Standard Oil Company” to expose the ruthlessness with which John D. Rockefeller had turned his oil business into an all-powerful monopoly. Her writing added force to the trustbusting reforms of the early 20th century.QUESTION 510 pointsWhich of these muckrakers do you find most interesting and why?