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Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw issued an apology to Richard Jewell, the security guard who saved lives in the aftermath of the 1996 Atlanta, Georgia, bombing and later became a prime suspect. Jewell, whose story was recently turned into a movie by Clint Eastwood, started evacuating people from Centennial Olympic Park during the Atlanta Olympics after he spotted the bomb. Days later, media outlets began reporting that Jewell was the primary suspect in the attack. His innocence, however, was announced after months of speculation. Brokaw, one of the journalists who reported that Jewell was a suspect, apologized on social media...

I still vividly recall watching the live announcement in September of 1990 by the International Olympic Committee awarding the Centennial Olympic Games (held in the summer of 1996) to the city of Atlanta. As the boisterous cheers after the initial announcement demonstrated, much of the whole state of Georgia was giddy with excitement. From Gainesville to Savannah, Olympic venues were built or otherwise prepared all over the state, and Georgia comedian Jeff Foxworthy promised the world that the Georgia Olympics would have its own distinct Southern flavor. I’m not much of a fan of the Olympics, so I didn’t get...

Years ago a professor of film studies told me that "Breaking Away" was one of the best "coming of age" films he'd ever seen because it didn't involve sex, but rather a boy being disillusioned with his cycling childhood heroes. "Richard Jewell" is in many respects a coming of age movie. Most people know the story: Atlanta Olympic Games security guard Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser), who had been fired from a police department and from a college for excessive enthusiasm, finds a bomb in a backpack left at the Atlanta Centennial venue. He calls the police, assists in moving...

...And they’re also challenging the notion that the paper ran a story with questionable sourcing. Do you have a response to the criticism?” I think the Atlanta Journal probably would be the one group that would be sort of complexed about that whole situation because they are the ones who printed the first thing of there being a crime caused by Richard Jewell,” said Eastwood. “And so they’re probably looking for ways to rationalize their activity. I don’t know for sure. I haven’t — never discussed it with anyone from there …”

Over the last few years, journalists have responded to accusations of "fake news" with arrogant proclamations that they are the misunderstood Guardians of Truth and Providers of Fact. But not every news story is a perfectly baked slice of Facts or Truth. Sometimes reporters merely recount what they heard but what they were told was wrong. We should all cringe whenever we hear the two words "breaking news." Time and again, news breaks out but the details are anyone's guess -- literally. "(ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/Fox) hasn't confirmed this, but others are reporting ...," they say, and then they proceed to repeat rumors...

The controversy surrounding Richard Jewell is heating up. Warner Bros. has released a statement responding to the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s demand for a disclaimer saying the late journalist Kathy Scruggs (portrayed in the film by Olivia Wilde) did not sleep with an FBI source for information in real life. “The film is based on a wide range of highly credible source material,” the studio’s statement, obtained by EW, says. “There is no disputing that Richard Jewell was an innocent man whose reputation and life were shredded by a miscarriage of justice. It is unfortunate and the ultimate irony that the...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is asking Warner Bros. and the makers of “Richard Jewell” to release a statement acknowledging it took dramatic license when it portrayed journalist Kathy Scruggs as trading sex for tips. The Clint Eastwood film looks at the media circus that broke out around Jewell, a security guard who came under suspicion for orchestrating the Centennial Olympic Park bombing before being exonerated. Scruggs, an employee at the paper, broke the story that Jewell was under investigation by the FBI. The film shows Scruggs, portrayed by Olivia Wilde, sleeping with an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) to get the story....

Clint Eastwood’s new film Richard Jewell has been criticised for its portrayal of one of the key journalists involved in reporting on the 1996 Atlanta bombing case on which the film is based. Jewell was a security guard who discovered the bomb and led bystanders away; he was investigated by the FBI for several weeks but never charged. After two further bombings, Eric Robert Rudolph was identified as a suspect, and convicted in 2005. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution controversially named him three days later. Kevin G Riley, editor in chief of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said in a letter to the Wrap...

A friend of mine called this morning who’d seen Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell last night in Hollywood. She knew I was seeing it this morning in New York. “It’s going to upset your apple cart of an Oscar list,” she said. She was right. Eastwood, at 90, has made a jewel of a film in “Richard Jewell,” a real masterclass in filmmaking. Eastwood will have to be nominated for Best Director. The screenplay and music (by Arturo Sandoval) will have to be nominated. And the actors, the actors now roll right into the top 5 in their respective categories. Paul...

Clint Eastwood points a stern finger at FBI investigators and the media in the first trailer for his new fact-based drama “Richard Jewell,” which explores the security guard who reported finding an explosive device at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics — and then was falsely accused of planting it himself.

U.S. wildlife officials will decide next year whether a wide-ranging Western bird species needs protections even though Congress has blocked such protections from taking effect, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Wednesday. They could determine the greater sage grouse is heading toward possible extinction, but they would be unable to intervene under the Endangered Species Act. The bird’s fate instead remains largely in the hands of the 11 individual states where they are found. President Barack Obama signed a $1.1 trillion spending bill late Tuesday with a provision that barred money from being spent on rules to protect the chicken-sized bird...

On Saturday, July 27, 1996, a terrorist’s bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park at the Atlanta Summer Games, killing two and injuring 111. The toll would have been far higher if not for security guard Richard Jewell, who discovered the bag holding the bomb and helped clear the area. Yet within hours, praise of his heroism turned to vicious accusations. Jewell would be hounded for months by investigations and the media. Eventually, the FBI would capture and convict Eric Robert Rudolph for the crime. Judging Jewell revisits the scene in Atlanta where Richard Jewell, a man simply doing his job,...

An example of the tension between Western Democrats and the Obama administration surfaced Monday when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told a rural audience that Washington bureaucrats are pushing a “slanted version” of the sage-grouse issue to political decision-makers. Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat who’s running for re-election in 2014, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is receiving one-sided advice from staff at the Fish and Wildlife Service over the issue of whether to place the Gunnison sage grouse on the endangered-species list. “She has an open mind, right, she’s not well-versed in this issue, and she recognizes that,” said Mr. Hickenlooper in...

'Right Kinds of Behavior' Needed for 'Clean Energy Future,' Says Interior Secretary August 14, 2013 - 11:13 AM By Susan Jones (CNSNews.com) - The "new energy future" will require the federal government to encourage "the right kinds of behavior," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told a clean energy summit in Nevada on Tuesday. "When you are getting into a new energy future, you really benefit from having the support of states -- and the federal government encouraging the right kinds of behavior and encouraging those incentives (for solar panel installation), she said. Jewell mentioned the "right" kind of behavior twice in...

Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all: In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said. The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the...

WASHINGTON - Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims. The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation. The last thing the FBI needed...

Richard A. Jewell (December 17, 1962–August 29, 2007) Matt Drudge describes Richard Jewell as the man the media murdered. The hyperbolic headline overstates what happened; Jewell actually died of severe diabetes. But Drudge could fairly report that Jewell got victimized by malicious, condescending hatred on the part of a patronizing, elitist media. Jewell became a part of the nation’s conscience during the tragedy-marred 1996 Summer Olympics. He worked the event as a security guard and was on duty at Centennial Olympic Park at 1:21 A.M. on 27 July 1996. Jewell had just done everything in his power to prevent the...

ATLANTA - Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was erroneously linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing, died Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Jewell, 44, was found dead in his west Georgia home, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.

(AP) ATLANTA Richard Jewell's fortunes changed in a split second. The security guard was initially hailed as a hero for spotting a suspicious backpack in a park and moving people out of harm's way just before a bomb exploded during a concert at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Then the media called him a suspect and he became a public spectacle. As the 10th anniversary nears of the July 27 blast that killed one and injured 111 others, the episode is still fresh in Jewell's mind. "The heroes are soon forgotten. The villains last a lifetime," Jewell told The Associated...

You'll hear the word "closure" a lot with regard to the Eric Rudolph case, and if you have no idea who Rudolph is, you're probably living a wonderful life. He's the humanoid who bombed Centennial Park at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, bombed a lesbian night club, bombed two abortion clinics, killed two people, maimed a nurse, and injured 120 folks unlucky enough to be caught on planet Earth in the same tiny sliver of lifetime as this unbridled loser. Now Rudolph has cut a deal with federal officials under which he will go to prison for the rest of his...