Cox Newspaper Demands Movie Retraction

Kathy Scruggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is demanding an official retraction from the makers of “Richard Jewell,” the new Clint Eastwood movie about what befell the security guard at the 1996 Olympics who discovered bombs at Centennial Park and was later accused of planting them.

According to The NY Daily News, the Journal and its editors said the reporter portrayal demeans the name of the late journalist Kathy Scruggs, who broke the story that the FBI was investigating Jewell as a suspect after he was first hailed as a hero. The movie implies that she slept with an FBI agent in a quid quo pro of sex for news tips. The paper said it simply isn’t so.

“The ‘Richard Jewell’ film falsely portrays the AJC and its personnel as extraordinarily reckless, using unprofessional and highly inappropriate reporting methods, and engaging in constitutional malice by recklessly disregarding information inconsistent with its planned reporting," the letter said. “This, too, is the height of irony, since all those involved in the film’s creation and dissemination and its false portrayal of the AJC are the ones who have acted recklessly and are engaging in constitutional malice.”

Scrugg’s “methodology was professional and appropriate, in contrast to how she is portrayed in the film,” the letter states.

“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,” says the letter sent to Warner Bros., Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray, quoted by Variety. “We further demand that you add a prominent disclaimer to the film to that effect.”

There was zero indication that Scruggs, who died in 2001 at age 41, slept with anyone involved in the Jewell investigation, the paper told Variety.