MAQ: Muckraking Compromat

I've found new items on My Amaranthine Quest (MAQ) to improve my vocabulary useful for exposing scandals and failures:

Compromat is an abbreviation of the Russian words for compromising material.

Compromat is essential for muckraking, which is searching for and exposing misconduct in public life. President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term muckraker during a speech in 1906 when he criticized the writings of some journalists as being excessive and irresponsible. He disliked the attitude and lack of optimism of muckraking's practitioners. In his speech, Roosevelt likened the muckrakers to the Man with the Muckrake character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678):

A man who could look no way but downward with the muck-rake in his hands, who was offered the celestial crown for his muckrake, but would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake the filth of the floor.

His speech nevertheless strongly advocated in favor of the muckrakers:

There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.