It's a term used for investigative journalists that I refuse to allow being associated with that walking pustule and boil upon the buttocks of the body politic.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker

"The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who exposed established institutions and leaders as corrupt. They typically had large audiences in popular magazines. The modern term is investigative journalism or watchdog journalism; investigative journalists in the US are often informally called "muckrakers".

The muckrakers played a highly visible role during the Progressive Era.[1] Muckraking magazines—notably McClure's of the publisher S. S. McClure—took on corporate monopolies and political machines, while trying to raise public awareness and anger at urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, prostitution, and child labor.[2] Most of the muckrakers wrote nonfiction, but fictional exposés often had a major impact too, such as those by Upton Sinclair.[3]

In contemporary American usage, the term can refer to journalists or others who "dig deep for the facts" or, when used pejoratively, those who seek to cause scandal.[4][5] The term is a reference to a character in John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, "the Man with the Muck-rake", who rejected salvation to focus on filth. It became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in a 1906 speech; Roosevelt acknowledged that "the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck."[4]"....(more)

Now we need to clean house and take out the trash!

Vocabulary.com

muckraker. A muckraker spreads scandals, usually for political advantage . Being a muckraker is considered sleazy.