Muckraking is the activity itself: digging up and publishing the unpleasant hidden facts about people, especially powerful or famous ones. It works both as a noun ('the paper is famous for its muckraking') and as a describing word before another noun ('muckraking journalism', 'a muckraking reporter'). As with muckraker, the feeling swings both ways. Used approvingly, it means brave investigative reporting that drags real wrongdoing into the light — corrupt officials, unsafe factories, money quietly changing hands. Used disapprovingly, it means raking through someone's private life to find something embarrassing, with little care about whether it matters or is even true. The disapproving sense is the more common one in everyday conversation; the approving one turns up more in writing about the history of journalism, where 'the muckraking era' names a real and respected period in early 1900s America. The verb 'to muckrake' also exists, but people use it much less than the -ing form.

扒糞（新聞）、揭人隱私；也可指認真的揭弊報導，褒貶要看上下文