Richard Jewell would have been an anonymous outlier, but for the fact that he was a security guard at Centennial Park in Atlanta in 1996, discovered a back pack bomb and alerted the disbelieving police. Two people died, and many were injured, but the casualties would have been far worse had Jewell not insisted that there was something amiss and that people needed to be evacuated. He was a hero, at first. But nearly instantaneously he became the suspect. He was a plump, 33 year old man, who had returned home to live with his mother. He was obsessed with being a law enforcement officer, a profession he worshipped, and he wasn't very good at it, though he had studied the penal code assiduously. He was slow; he was plodding, the kind of person who is tormented by bullies in school and laughed at by the wise, self-righteous adult world.
There was a scene in the Clint Eastwood take on the events of the bombing, investigation and media coverage, where FBI agents are attempting to deceive Jewell into believing that their videoed questioning is to be for a training film. They hand him a form that acknowledged he had been read his rights, and waived them, telling him to sign as merely a piece of authenticity for the training film. Now, as a lawyer, in fact a prosecutor (of attorneys for administrative discipline) and consumer of legal television shows, fictional and documentary, I knew that police and other criminal authorities are allowed to use something called "strategic deception" in their interviewing. But this? I couldn't believe as I watched the scene that it could possibly be based on any semblance of fact.
But it was. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/07/29/fbi-conduct-constitutionally-suspect-in-jewell-case-says-justice-department/441fc00d-07ee-4657-a28c-06cd3c625d9f/
(There is also Marie Brenner's 1997 article in Vanity Fair which provides a great deal of information about the whole Jewell affair: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/1fd2d7ae-10d8-474b-9bf1-d1558af697be
The conduct was denominated "constitutionally suspect" and a "major error in judgment". There was some semblance of discipline of certain of the investigators. I remember the events vaguely. I knew there was a bombing. I didn't remember that anyone had died, or that there had been injuries. I knew that Jewell was the primary focus for a while, and then he was not. I did not have any idea what had happened to him after 1996.
As the movie unfolded, though, I found myself impatient to read about the events to compare them to the Eastwood retelling. The only thing I had read about the film was how upset the media was about the movie's treatment of the reporter, Nancy Scruggs, now, like Mr. Jewell, deceased. There is no doubt that there was a leak from the FBI to Scruggs leading to the identification and subsequent media decimation of the life of Jewell, but the movie connects Scruggs to a composite character representing the FBI (played by Jon Hamm) and posits that there was a sexual quid pro quo. This bothered me. It still does. Mr. Eastwood interpolated the scene, I'm guessing, from descriptions of her, one or two of them apparently in writing. Here is one from the Atlanta Magazine in July 2003, after she died.
She was blonde and wore mini-skirts and gaudy stockings. She smoked. She drank. She cussed. She flaunted her sexuality. She dated Lewis Grizzard (my note: he was a writer, and columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who died in 1994). She dated an editor who allegedly beat her with a telephone. She dated cops, including one who was accused of stealing money from the pockets of the dead. 'Kathy was a bigger than life figure. . .she was over the top in many ways.'
You can read the rest of the article.
https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/requiem-for-a-reporter-kathy-scruggs/
I guess the question is, based on his research, and since the actual source was never revealed (Scruggs and her co-writer were jailed for refusing to do so), was it unreasonable artistic license by Mr. Eastwood to suggest that the real life Scruggs slept with anyone to get the information? The media, as to this late reporter, say yes. I would agree with them, without reservation, if the media had any level of credibility regarding their conduct as to Mr. Jewell, who was figuratively roasted alive without any concern about his future, his reputation, or his legacy. I guess I agree, but with reservation. I wish Eastwood had not mixed a real life person with a fictional character and an uncorroborated conclusion as to how the real life person got the information in the first place. But here is my other question, isn't that done in many movies based on real life public characters? Are there some people in the public eye who are off limits? Or are all of them off limits (which will severely, perhaps appropriately, limit movie making about real life figures).
For the most part the movie seems to be on target with the facts of what happened to Richard Jewell.
He too is dead and I doubt his reputation ever recovered from a public "oops we made a mistake" destruction. I wouldn't be surprised if some people still think he did it.
But back to the credibility of the protesting media. Richard Jewell was 23 years ago. Where was their concern about truth and reputation when Judge Kavanaugh was being accused of criminal acts without a soupcon of actual evidence other than accusation. I seem to remember wall to wall coverage with attending salivation and shouts of Kavanaugh's unfitness. And now that the Judge somehow made it to the Supreme Court despite the best efforts of a political party doing the informational tango with the media, the matter has died. Phyllis Schafly is dead, and she is a hated conservative. But a popular television series repeated aspersions on her character that are still disputed today. There was no mention of the disputations for fairness. Then there is the movie "Bombshell". I haven't seen it yet, I admit. I will. It involves Roger Ailes of Fox News. Was there any license taken regarding this deceased person? My reading of some of the reviews indicates license was indeed taken. Is there outrage about it? Or is it all right because the woke folk don't like Fox News?
The media now objects to that of which it is the progenitor, even the first cause. Are they and their representatives to be spared that which they do not spare anyone else? The genie is out of the bottle, unless and until it can be stuffed back in with the rediscovery of truth, the objective kind, where accusation and malevolent gossip do not become facts. Do not do unto others what you wish they would not do unto you. But it's probably too late. And everybody has to watch his or her back and pray not to be a target.
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