
- #Atlanta journal constitution richard jewell reporter movie
- #Atlanta journal constitution richard jewell reporter license
She told the Hollywood Reporter that “by no means” was she intending to suggest that as a female reporter Scruggs needed to use her sexuality. Wilde defended her portrayal of Scruggs last week, saying she had an “immense amount of respect” for the reporter, who died in 2001 from an overdose of prescription pain pills. He said he understood that it wasn’t a documentary but also asked, should a film be fair? Roughton said he had read Ray’s 2015 screenplay and “it gave pause” - both the scene implying a sex-for-information scenario and the script’s flattening of some people into stereotypes. This leaves little space for nuance,” said Bert Roughton, who was Scruggs’ editor when the Jewell story broke, in a September AJC opinion piece. Movies often reduce complex people to types. It would be so easy to play Kathy as a love interest, as something less than the competent reporter she was. “I worry about Eastwood’s version of Kathy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has had its antennae up for a while regarding “Richard Jewell,” which also stars Paul Walter Hauser as the titular character, along with Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates. That is entirely false and malicious, and it is extremely defamatory and damaging.” “Such a portrayal makes it appear that the AJC sexually exploited its staff and/or that it facilitated or condoned offering sexual gratification to sources in exchange for stories. “The AJC’s reporter is reduced to a sex-trading object in the film,” says the letter, which according to the AJC was sent to Warner Bros., Eastwood, screenwriter Billy Ray and others. Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, is depicted as a wildly unethical journalist who offers to trade sex for information from an FBI agent portrayed by Jon Hamm. She broke the story that security guard Jewell - at that point a hero for saving countless lives in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta - was in fact the FBI’s lead suspect in the case.

slap a disclaimer on the Clint Eastwood film.Īt issue is the film’s portrayal of the late reporter Kathy Scruggs.

Director Clint Eastwood and actress Olivia Wilde on the set of “Richard Jewell” Warner Bros.With only days left before “Richard Jewell” hits theaters, lawyers for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its parent company, Cox Enterprises, have demanded that Warner Bros. “We have been clear about how disturbed we are in the film’s use of a Hollywood trope about reporters … and how it misrepresents how seriously journalists concern themselves with reporting accurately and ethically,” the editor of the Journal-Constitution, Kevin G.
#Atlanta journal constitution richard jewell reporter movie
The movie shows Wilde sleeping with an FBI agent - portrayed by Jon Hamm - to get the scoop. Scruggs, who is portrayed by Olivia Wilde in the film, broke the story that the FBI was investigating Jewell in connection with the blast. The movie tells the story of how security guard Richard Jewell was thrust into the spotlight after the Journal-Constitution reported he was under investigation for the 1996 bombing that killed one and wounded more than 100 others. “We further demand that you add a prominent disclaimer to the film to that effect,” they added, according to Variety.
#Atlanta journal constitution richard jewell reporter license
“We hereby demand that you immediately issue a statement publicly acknowledging that some events were imagined for dramatic purposes and artistic license and dramatization were used in the film’s portrayal of events and characters,” the newspaper wrote to Warner Bros., Eastwood and writer Billy Ray. The newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, told Variety that the allegation that former reporter Kathy Scruggs bedded an FBI agent to learn that a security guard was under investigation for the Centennial Olympic Park bombing is baseless. An Atlanta newspaper has demanded that the studio behind Clint Eastwood‘s new movie “Richard Jewell” issue a statement saying they used dramatic license when portraying a reporter sleeping with a source to break a story, a report said Monday.
