“Richard Jewell” screenwriter Billy Ray is getting pushback from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor of reporter Kathy Scruggs, saying that Ray damaged the reputation of a woman “who can’t do anything at all now to recover” it.
Bert Roughton, who was Scruggs’ editor in verifying her reporting on the Jewell case during the 1996 Olympics, took issue with Clint Eastwood’s film for specifically criticizing and naming her, rather than himself, other managing editors or the news outlet as a whole.
Scruggs died in 2001 of a drug overdose after years of depression that resulted from the paper being sued by Jewell for defamation.