ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts three things. First, it provides historical and conceptual frameworks of watchdog journalism and corporate scandals within the context of the crisis of global capitalism. Second, it explores the emergence of the muckraking movement and corporate corruption in the twentieth century. Third, it looks at how muckraking journalism of the early twentieth century involving the Standard Oil Company compares to the twenty-first-century investigative journalism involving the Enron scandal. One of the most famous tests of watchdog journalism was associated with Nellie Bly who represented a type of popular reporting in the USA, in the late nineteenth century that used undercover reporting strategies to expose hidden corporate scandals. The Nellie Bly expose of the maltreatment and utter neglect of inmates of a women's mad asylum house represents one of the most celebrated cases of exposure journalism in the late nineteenth century.
