Some time after midnight on July 27, 1996, Richard Jewell was meandering through Centennial Olympic Park. Thousands of spectators had gathered for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and the 33-year-old security guard was patrolling the AT&T tower he had been told to observe. He wasn’t hired to save lives, but he did.
When he pointed out a suspicious backpack to authorities, Jewell couldn’t have guessed what would happen next. While police were still evacuating bystanders, the 40-pound pipe bomb in the backpack exploded, leaving two dead and more than 100 others injured.
For two days, the man who discovered the bomb and prevented countless deaths was hailed as a hero. Then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution named Jewell as a suspect in the bombing, and three months of media smears ensued. While Jewell was under FBI investigation for being a good Samaritan, the media “portrayed him as a loser and law-enforcement wannabe who may have planted the bomb so he would look like a hero when he discovered it later,” according to the Washington Post. Overzealous reporters even camped outside his mother’s home.
The real bomber wasn’t named as a suspect for nearly two years. So in the absence of a villain, the media made one up. Already guilty in the court of public opinion, Jewell was maligned for almost three months before the Justice Department announced he was no longer a suspect.
Clint Eastwood’s latest project, the upcoming film Richard Jewell, highlights this significant moment in media malpractice.
The film, which comes out next week, looks like a powerful and incredibly timely story. The case for caution is now more important than ever.
Kevin Salwen, who covered the Southeast for the Wall Street Journal in the ’90s, co-wrote a book about the Jewell ordeal called The Suspect. He told Fox that 1996 was a “fascinating year in media,” as major outlets were just beginning to publish online. “All of a sudden the pace of news really accelerates,” Salwen said. “And, in many ways, it’s very much a pre-social media social media story.”
Since the smearing of Jewell more than two decades ago, the media hasn’t learned its lesson. Thanks to the internet and Twitter, the stakes have never been higher. Examples of private citizens smeared by the public eye are numerous.
In 2002, the New York Times boldly published the name of the anthrax killer, naming the wrong man. There was little to no recompense for Steven Hatfill, the man wrongly accused, especially after a judge ruled him a public figure.
In 2006, three members of Duke’s lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. While the accusations were still being examined, the media had already chosen a victim and three villains. “We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations,” North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy A. Cooper, said at a news conference after declaring the players innocent.
In 2013, the New York Post published photos of the two Boston Marathon bombers on its front page — except, you guessed it, the men were not the bombers.
This January, newsrooms were quick to paint a student from Covington Catholic High School as a racist for a viral, out-of-context video that showed him grinning (supposedly mockingly) at a Native American man. Further video told a very different story, and the student has sued the Washington Post for libel.
Now that we have Twitter, viral stories, and an abundance of fake news, it’s even more important that the media learn not to jump to conclusions. Unfortunately, though, we all love a good scapegoat.
Jewell, who died in 2007, will never get to see the film intended to brighten his name. But at least it will teach a new generation the truth about the man accused of being a killer. Jewell’s mother told Sports Illustrated that on the anniversary of the bombing, Richard would go to Centennial Park and place a rose in memory of Alice Hawthorne, the woman who was killed.
Clint Eastwood called the attacks against Jewell, “A great American tragedy.”
“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions right away, and we should go back to the basics of innocent until proven guilty,” Eastwood said at Richard Jewell‘s world premiere. “That’s not happening in a lot of situations nowadays. It didn’t happen in his case definitely.”
Now, when rumors can be spread to the entire world with just a tweet, the next Richard Jewell will have it much, much worse.
Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Jewell, told the Hollywood Reporter that this kind of character attack could happen to anyone. “What happened to Richard Jewell should be illuminated,” he said, “so people can see that history is going to repeat itself if we don’t take care of people in those situations.”
