Teaching Notes

Synopsis

The Richard Jewell case raises various issues about relations between journalists and government sources, but the way the authors have developed this case is designed for teachers to focus class discussion primarily on two of them:

1. What level of proof and sourcing are required to say a story is verified?
2. Do journalists have a responsibility to balance the public's right to know with a suspect's presumption of innocence?

The Jewell case offers a rich opportunity to explore these because the reporters and editors were trying to be careful, despite the fact that, in the end, Jewell turned out not to be the bomber. Another man, Eric Robert Rudolph, was eventually indicted for the crime. What makes this case so useful is that it raises the fundamental issue put forth a half century ago by the Hutchins Commission, that the press must not just publish facts, but it must publish the truth about the facts. Did the AJC do that in its initial story in this case? Lawyers for the Journal-Constitution argue that the paper lived up to its journalistic obligations, because "although Jewell was not ultimately found to have been involved in the bombing, the evidence regarding Jewell that had emerged... amply supported the FBI story." Critics argue that, closer examination suggests the journalists did not consider several key elements. What could the paper have done differently?

The class discussion, we suggest should deal with verification of certain facts, move into the larger implications of that, and then back to verification of other facts. At the end, students will be able to make some general conclusions about verification and the implications for the presumption of innocence. For teaching purposes we think it is useful to focus on the first-day story.

Teaching Plan

The class discussion, we suggest should deal with verification of certain facts, move into the larger implications of that, and then back to verification of other facts. At the end, students will be able to make some general conclusions about verification and the implications for the presumption of innocence. For teaching purposes we think it is useful to focus on the first-day story.

In teaching the case, we would recommend you have the students read the narrative before any class discussion, but not the epilogue. Tip your hand as little as possible about the outcome of the Jewell story, including any lawsuits or other fallout. Even if the students know in a general sense that Jewell was suspected of the Olympic bombing, we doubt they will know the particulars of how and why.

The reporters and editors involved argue that they verified and accurately reported police suspicions and never reported that Jewell was guilty. Their job is one of accuracy—in this case, about police thinking.

With this rationale in mind, the discussion questions offered here move back and forth between two central issues:

Verification

Presumption of innocence

These two issues are so intertwined that to separate them completely would prove both very difficult and not as worthwhile journalistically. This is why it is crucial to reach the end of the discussion. This is where you, the professor, bring it all together and have the students reconsider their initial take on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's coverage.

Some professors have found it helpful to use role-playing during the class in which selected students play the role of different reporters and editors at the Atlanta paper and managers at the relevant TV outlets. They decide how they would react in the place of Scruggs, Martz, Walter, etc. Role-play can be used periodically throughout the class. If role-play does not suit your class, you could have a straight class discussion.

Discussion Questions and Analysis

To get juices flowing, you could open with a simple question:

"How did the journalists at the Journal-Constitution do on Day One?"

Students will likely praise certain aspects of the reporting. (Then, as you put new questions to them, they may revise their thinking.) Some of the positive aspects include:

The Problems

Now the professor can lead the class into some of the problems, perhaps starting by offering Scruggs' and Bozman's defense of the first story.

Scruggs and others argue that their reporting was appropriate because it accurately portrayed police thinking. "We have not done anything wrong in that everything we wrote has been accurate," Scruggs would say later.

Rochelle Bozman, the Olympic security editor, was later asked whether, if Jewell turned out to be innocent, she would feel she had done a "big wrong." Her answer was, "We didn't say he was guilty."

Lawyers for the paper point out that they did the following to verify that law enforcement was indeed looking at Jewell as a suspect:

Among other things, they had no less than four sources who spoke on anonymity saying Jewell matched a bomber profile. They sent an intern to watch his apartment who accurately deduced that Jewell's apartment was under law enforcement observation. And they sent a reporter to Habersham County to look at Jewell's police records.

In addition, the paper's lawyers contend that Jewell already being in the public eye in connection with the bombing, encouraging people to return the park and still being assigned to park security lent further weight to the argument to publish his name.

What do you think of the argument that the paper did its job properly? (Discuss)

Lawyers contend that given Jewell's public prominence, that a search warrant was imminent and that Jewell was urging people to return to Olympic Park,there was no way his status as a suspect "could be kept secret." Do you agree? (Discuss)

Is it enough to accurately portray police suspicions, even if those suspicions prove to be wrong? What responsibility do journalists have to worry about the presumption of innocence, or is that beyond the realm of journalistic accuracy?

Let the class discuss this, then add, should the AJC have done more to point out what police didn't know, to make explicit how tentative the suspicious of Jewell were?

Is the timing of the story an issue? How about the front-page play? Was there a way to run the story but write it differently?

When being questioned by Carrie Teegardin (on staff at the paper) for the piece that never ran, Scruggs remarked, "It just really is mind-boggling to me that we are having this kind of debate over something that I consider bread and butter to the profession." When asked whether there may be anything inappropriate with what they reported, Scruggs said. "I certainly do see the point that if this man is exonerated, then he has been damaged, you know, in the eyes of public opinion. But we have not done anything wrong in that everything we wrote has been accurate."

Weighing the Basis of Police Suspicions
Assuming some students feel a responsibility to explore the basis of police suspicions in the story, you can move on:

What did the police have?

The paper's attorneys note that since various law enforcement documents have not been made public and since no one from the paper was allowed by attorneys to discuss their role for this case study, there are limits to what anyone outside can know.

Still, attorneys for the paper note that police had enough to constitute probable cause to obtain two separate search warrants of Jewell's apartment and vehicle. The later released FBI affidavits used as the basis for those search warrants cite that the FBI based its suspicions, among other things, on the following:

In addition, attorneys argue, the paper's reporters knew:

Aside from the fact that Jewell was at the site and had a backpack, the police still had little or no physical evidence such as fingerprints, bomb making equipment or eyewitness accounts linking Jewell to the bombing. In fact, they had not yet even interviewed him as a suspect or searched his apartment.

At least in their day one story, Martz and Scruggs never pointed out the limits of the police information. Should they have?

Interestingly, on day three the AJC ran a story under the headline "Guesswork isn't Proof: Solving a killing can be a slow process." In it, staff writer Richard Whitt wrote, "[N]ot every suspect turns out to be guilty," and referenced an earlier incident in Atlanta where a man was wrongly accused of killing a school teacher. "The experience cost him his home, destroyed his 23-year marriage and landed him in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer."

As for the role of Jewell's former employer, Scruggs would later justify the story, in part, because, she said, Jewell's ex-boss "turned him in." In fact, Piedmont College president Ray Cleere merely contacted law enforcement officials after seeing Jewell on television to say that there were problems with Jewell's record at the college. Cleere's phone call and the employment problems relate to his past rather than his present.

The lawyers for the paper point out that no one at the paper, including Scruggs, ever thought that Cleere had primary evidence linking Jewell to the bombing. The lawyers also argue that there was much information given to reporters at the AJC that did not end up in the paper.

The Profile
The "profile" bears some discussion. The term profile has more than one meaning. While law enforcement officials and even many journalists may have a clear understanding of the two types of profiles, many readers may not.

In one type of profile, the law enforcement officials take the facts of a particular case because they don't have a suspect and nail down the characteristics the police should be looking for. This is the kind of profiling made famous in the movie Silence of the Lambs, in the TV program Profiler or in the Ted Kaczynski case. These detailed profiles help investigators locate suspects.

In the second, more general kind, police have identified patterns or characteristics of behavior in perpetrators in past cases and use them to steer their investigation. These profiles include multiple characteristics that are then matched to suspects. For example, Drug Enforcement Agents, in a case reviewed by the Supreme Court in 1989, used such characteristics to stop and search a suspected drug courier on the facts that he paid $2,100 for two round-trip airline tickets from a roll of $20 bills, that he traveled under an alias, that his original destination was Miami, a source city for illicit drugs, that he stayed only 48 hours, even though the round-trip took 20 hours, and that he appeared nervous during the flight and checked none of his luggage.

In the case of Jewell, investigators were referring to this more general use of the term profile. Once police started considering Jewell, they then concluded that he fit the characteristics of a lone bomber. But there was no specific profile written about Jewell or of this particular bombing, as far as could be learned. Police had not established yet that there was even a lone bomber, or whether there might be accomplices. When the paper said Jewell "fits the profile," it meant that he shared characteristics of one kind of person who might commit this type of crime. But the bomber in this case, might have fit any number of profiles—including a militia type (the first theory) or some other ideologically motivated act. In fact, the man later charged with the crime, Eric Rudolph, is not a hero wannabe but allegedly is an ideologically driven killer.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution lawyers argue, "[A]ny minimally intelligent person would understand" that the paper was referring to the more general type of profile and note that the word "generally" is used in the story. But other than the use of that word, the news story offered little attempt to explain the type of profile law enforcement agents were relying here. Indeed, the authors of this case were at first unclear about it

In addition, defenders of the Journal-Constitution argue that all any profile does is identify the characteristics of the kind of person who might have committed this crime. But to some critics, the first type of profile offers a significantly more specific connection to the suspect and the crime itself.

The lawyers also point out that former FBI profiler Robert Ressler was quoted in a Denver Newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, as saying that Jewell seemed to fit that profile. Months later in the Journal-Constitution, he criticized the emphasis placed on the profile.

Is the profile clear? Does it make a difference that it was general? Was there adequate evidence to go with the story?

The story says Jewell "fits the profile of the lone bomber." Managing Editor Walter would later acknowledge misgivings about this construction, and the implication of a more precise kind of profile or even the notion that the police had pinned down that the bomber was alone. When asked about that sentence, he said, "That is one of those things that I would rewrite if I had the time to rewrite it. It reads wrong. It reads like, not that—and even the word 'the' is wrong. Not 'the lone bomber,' not 'this lone bomber.''

Indeed, a story in the next day's Atlanta Constitution did discuss various possible motives for the bombing. Headlined "A motive? Most seek glory, power or revenge," the story by Ron Martz began:

"It may have been done in search of glory for saving lives. It may have been the quest for power that comes from bringing the Olympic celebration (to) a halt. Or it may have been revenge for being unable to retain an important job with a police department.

"Whatever the reason, the man under investigation for planting a bomb in Centennial Olympic Park appears to fit one of the three profile groups developed by experts in criminal behavior."

Again, authors of the case were limited in the details they could compile since many of the law enforcement records remain confidential. Nevertheless, what has been made public suggests that the actual discussion of Jewell as a possible suspect rested on his own demeanor after the bombing as much as any profile.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said that agents in the FBI's profiling and behavioral unit reviewed Jewell's televised news interviews, and "concurred with Atlanta's assessment that Jewell fit the profile of a person who might create an incident so he could emerge as a hero."

The profiling agents then drafted an "analysis," based on information from the FBI's Atlanta office and from viewing Jewell's televised interviews and faxed it to Atlanta and to FBI headquarters. The analysis "noted that Jewell's account of the bombing seemed vague on important points and that he seemed uncomfortable discussing the victims," Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility said. "The analysis suggested that Jewell wanted to be a law enforcement agent and may have believed that becoming a hero at the Olympic Games would help him land a new job in law enforcement." The profiling agents "also thought that Jewell's statement in a televised interview that he hoped he could get such a position in Atlanta after the Olympic Games was a highly inappropriate comment in the context of a lethal bombing and could indicate a possible motive for the bombing."

Was he seeking publicity?
In addition to failing to question the nature of the profile, the reporters involved accepted the notion that Jewell fit the profile because of his publicity seeking. Their story read: "Jewell has become a celebrity in the wake of the bombing, making an appearance this morning at the reopened park with Katie Couric on the Today Show. He also has approached newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, seeking publicity for his actions."

What did Scruggs, Martz and others at the paper do to verify this element of their story?

Deposition statements contradict the assertion that Jewell sought publicity and the two reporters whose names appeared on the story say they did not write that he had approached their paper. That assertion was added by Burt Roughton, a reporter in charge of non-sports Olympic news, who later explained his action by saying, "There was a general impression at the time that he was making the media rounds."

In this case, there were at least three possible initiators of the publicity: 1) At least some media organizations are on record as acknowledging that they sought out Jewell. Lawyers for the AJC say the paper recognizes that some media sought out Jewell, but believe most of the time this was not the case. 2) A public relations man working for AT&T also served as a go-between with media organizations on behalf of Jewell, and Jewell's lawyers argue it was the agent, not Jewell, promoting the security guard's appearances. 3) Jewell might have been doing some of it himself, or directing the public relations man to do it for him.

Whether Jewell sought the news media or the news media sought Jewell is a matter of continuing dispute.

In purely legal terms, since the trial judge found in his ruling that Jewell had become a public figure, exactly how the interviews came about does not matter because in the end he took part in them voluntarily. In terms of journalism, however, critics argue the distinction is important because it goes to the issue of Jewell's purported motive. In this first story, the AJC stated flatly that Jewell was "seeking publicity," which thus confirmed a key idea—he wanted to be perceived as a hero. The story suggests he sought the media's attention as part of a plan to use the bombing to jumpstart his faltering career. Jewell's attorney, Lin Wood argues that Jewell merely acquiesced to media attention. He accuses the newspaper of manufacturing the motive and falsely shaping Jewell to fit it. At the very least, the AJC story suggests that Jewell was much more aggressive in his publicity seeking than it appears he may have been.

Naming an Uncharged Suspect

Should the paper have been more cautious in naming Jewell as the suspect because he had not been charged? Does being uncharged change the burden of proof?

At the time of the story, the police had not yet charged Jewell with any crime. Nor would they. This raises the question of whether the journalists should be concerned with presumption of innocence.

Not long ago, some news organizations had rules against naming suspects who had not been charged. In some states, such as Minnesota, press and bar organizations even developed voluntary guidelines for handling criminal cases in the press. In the Minnesota guidelines, news organizations are not supposed to name uncharged suspects on the basis that the press has an obligation to help balance the right to know with the right to a presumption of innocence.

Georgia has no such guidelines, but some journalists believe this presumption of innocence should be a tenet of every responsible journalist. Others believe it is no longer realistic.

In naming Jewell as the suspect in the first story, Scruggs and Martz relied on sources that would not let their own names be used or their agencies identified.

There was no official statement naming Jewell as a suspect.

The first story offered readers no explanation of who said Jewell was a key suspect or how well positioned the source or sources were.

Managing Editor Walter later argued that in this case the paper had no choice but to publish. In effect, it did not have the luxury of worrying about presumption of innocence. "This doesn't mean it isn't a dilemma, but you just don't have an alternative." The story was so competitive, and leaking out so quickly, it was going to come out anyway, Walter's argument implies. "To me, it's not a question of can or should this information be withheld. It is impossible to withhold it, and only the question is, so at what moment does it, in fact, become public."

In his explanations, Walter suggests that such issues as fairness are frankly beyond the scope of the press in this case. Given that the paper was publishing accusations based on police suspicions (from sources who would not be named) of an uncharged man, Walter asks is that fair to Jewell? He then answers his own question: "I guess my answer is, it is that old cliché: Life isn't fair. … If you didn't print Tuesday afternoon the FBI agents were at his door, what do you do on Wednesday morning, when half of the apartment complex (where Jewell lives) gets emptied out and … all of the residents are forced to leave. … Do you not print that? And, then, what do you say to all of the people on Buford Highway (location of Jewell's mother's apartment) who say, 'What was all that going on on Buford Highway?' So there is no choice, which may be very unfair to him in the long run, but it is not the evil media and the evil FBI conspiring to dangle him out there. It is a circumstance."

What does the class think of Walter's argument?

(Incidentally, at the time of Tuesday's story, the FBI had not yet knocked on Jewell's door as Walter suggests.)

As assistant editor Bozman noted in the in-house interview that was not published, the tips from law enforcement "turned out not to be entirely accurate in that they were saying they were going to move on him the next day... It sounded like they were saying to us that they were going to go and get him, but all they really did was take him in for questioning."

Actually FBI agents did not take him in for questioning. Jewell drove his own vehicle to the FBI offices to avoid giving reporters outside his door the misperception that he was in custody. Walters also said that "the physical activity"—agents knocking on Jewell's door—"was what gave it its weight."

To advance the discussion teachers might suggest there are two problems with Walter's argument.

  1. A long-standing tenet of journalism is that journalists should avoid being manipulated by the police and becoming an extension of law enforcement. If you agree with critics who argue that Scruggs and Martz did not question the fairness or strength of police suspicions, how can they judge whether the police were using them to squeeze a suspect?

    When later asked, Walter said he didn't think his paper was being used to sweat out a suspect. "I didn't think of it at the time because of the way the information was coming to us from two separate tracks... and because Kathy and Ron have worked their sources well over the last couple of years, I had the confidence that these were not people trying to use us."

  2. Walter is arguing that this story would come out anyway: It's true, isn't it, that press ethics are situational, and necessarily have to be pragmatic?

    Is Walter suggesting, by implication, that the lowest ethics of the press corps dictate his own; that the paper need not consider the fairness to Jewell—indeed cannot—because others won't?

While this may be a common view, is it correct? Is it enough to simply report the facts or does the responsibility go beyond this? Are there certain principles that should remain solid in any circumstance? What are the implications of letting circumstances dictate your principles?

The class should probe whether this attitude is an abdication of some of the most basic concepts of journalistic responsibility and professionalism. Journalists have long ago settled that it is improper journalistically to publish a story that gets the facts literally right but is more deeply inaccurate. To push the discussion, the teacher might suggest this essentially is the mistake the press made in the case of Joseph McCarthy. Reporters accurately quoted Joseph McCarthy saying he has proof of communists in the State Department when in fact he had no such proof. In this case, police had suspicions but little proof, and the suspicions turned out to be wrong.

The paper's lawyers argue that "the decision to publish was made both because of the special prominence and visibility Jewell already had achieved as a 'media hero' and unofficial spokesman for park safety, and because his status as a suspect was inevitably going to be public."

They also argue that newspapers regularly "publish accounts of criminal suspects who have been charged, but not tried or convicted of any crime. Quite literally, they are entitled to the presumption of innocence. Because police investigative records ordinarily are not public until the prosecution is over, members of the press often have little way of knowing whether substantial evidence actually supports the prosecution until well after arrest and charging." But it is important to note here that Jewell had not even been charged.

We hope the class wrestles with the implications of the AJC's position here, which raises broad issues and is important because the argument is not unusual.

The paper also makes an argument that it has performed an affirmative good in the Jewell case. The AJC's lawyers contend that the paper was protecting public safety by alerting citizens of this potentially dangerous person who until the story ran, was still working at the park. In addition, they suggest that by closely monitoring and making public police activity, the paper in a way keeps the police from overstepping their authority.

You could ask what the class thinks of these arguments.

Wrap Up and Class Vote
When the discussion over verifying the profile winds down, it is time to bring the students full circle and draw some conclusions. You might place the students in the shoes of Walter and take a class vote: Looking back, if you were the managing editor, would you A) Run the story as is? B) Hold the story until you were able to verify with named sources law enforcement activities? C) Run the story but not use Jewell's name?

After the discussion wraps up, pass out the epilogue for the students to read. (You could have them read it before the next class and then continue the discussion if you wish.)

Epilogue

Events were soon to prove that suspicions about Jewell did not pan out. And it is important to understand that there was nothing unusual about this: especially in high-profile cases, investigators often explore a variety of possibilities, many of which turn out to be wrong. That is one of the principal reasons why law enforcement agencies are supposed to keep their activities confidential: to protect the lives and reputations of individuals who will ultimately be cleared. And all this is widely understood by journalists, especially those who cover the police. It is relatively cost-free for a law enforcement agency to abandon a line of inquiry if it remains confidential. The opposite is true if a news organization promulgates information from that inquiry that ultimately proves unfounded; nothing can undo the damage of a false allegation once it is published.

Viewed in this light, much is troubling about the Journal-Constitution's first story naming Jewell as a suspect. At the very least, it provides a cautionary tale for the future because, from large pieces of evidence and small ones, it seems clear that concerns about fairness or the possibility of being wrong were not central to the reporting. In the July 30th story, there was no mention of what police were lacking in their developing case against Jewell. Of course journalists cannot be expected to know the entirety of what police have and don't have, but they can bring attention to missing information, to the gaps. The AJC's initial story offered little in this regard. In the largest gap of all, that there was no comment from Jewell on the fact that the paper was naming him as the focus of the federal investigation, the paper's only mention was, "He refused to open the door when a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution knocked." Testimony shows that they did not give him the opportunity to comment. Martz says he called and got no answer; the intern knocked at his door but did not mention the forthcoming story.

On Oct. 26, 1996, U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander in Atlanta advised Jewell's lawyers that "based on the evidence developed to date, Mr. Jewell is not a target of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing investigation." In a public statement, he drove the nail deeper. "Barring any newly disclosed evidence," he said, "that status will not change."

The next day, a Sunday, the Journal-Constitution produced a package of stories under headlines including:

"Jewell is cleared in bomb case"

"Jewel's 'faith in justice system' restored"

"Before blast hit, guard hustled to get crowd out"

"Was criminal profiling misused?"

"Authorities used deceit, lawyers say"

On October 28, CNN's Crossfire continued its discussion of Jewell, assessing him as a suspect, and in doing so, committed critical errors. Panelist Bill Press remarked, "But when you look at this affidavit, the affidavit shows that ... he matched the eyewitness description, including he had a green knapsack. He had bomb training in making homemade bombs... the guy was seen, actually, with a homemade bomb at his home a few days before."

A day later, CNN broadcast the following correction: "Press said last night that Jewell matched eyewitness description in affidavit. Description in affidavit was too vague to support that statement. Misspoke when he said Jewell was seen with homemade bomb at home, was mistakenly referring to explosion near Jewell's home year or more before the bombing. Press said Jewell had been bounced out of three law enforcement jobs, affidavit said he was fired from only one job. Press apologizes."

On Oct. 29, the Journal-Constitution carried in full Jewell's opening statement at a news conference under the headline:

"In its rush...the FBI trampled on my rights as a citizen"

Jewell's statement went on to accuse the media of publishing a series of lies about him. Among them:

"The media said I fit the profile of a lone bomber. That was a lie.

"The media said I was a former law enforcement officer, a frustrated police wannabe. That was a lie. I was then, and am now, a law enforcement officer. The fact that I was between jobs and took a position as a security guard at the Olympics did not change that fact."

That day the paper also ran excerpts from the newly released search warrant affidavits, as well as a Scruggs-Martz story headlined:

"FBI basis for searches called sketchy"

And on October 30, Dave Kindred weighed in with another column. It began with his trademark scene-setting. Kindred portrayed Jewell as stepping out of the shadows into the light. How Jewell had come to be in the shadows, and who had brought him out were not addressed. But the column contained a backhanded acknowledgment that things may not have been as they seemed back in the days when he juxtaposed Richard Jewell with Wayne Williams.

Describing Jewell as the press conference concluded, Kindred said "He took no questions and walked from the dais immediately, his left hand on his mother's elbow, but how good it must have felt for Richard Jewell to say those words. Hero or fool? Such had been the question. If 88 days of federal investigation have led not to his arrest but to a government letter declaring him free of suspicion, then the answer seems to be Richard Jewell, hero."

On Oct. 14, 1998, federal authorities charged Eric Robert Rudolph with the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Rudolph had been previously charged with the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala. The Olympic bombing charges also accused him of later bombings at an abortion clinic and a gay-lesbian bar in Atlanta. The charges were supported by a sealed affidavit, and FBI Director Freeh said there was no higher priority in domestic terrorism than Rudolph's capture, who had been placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

There were other offenders—journalistic offenders, at least in the eyes of Jewell's lawyers.

After a New York federal judge turned down key portions of the New York Post's motion to dismiss Jewell's $15 million libel suit against it, the suit was settled for an undisclosed amount. Slade R. Metcalf, who represented the paper, declined to discuss the reasons for settlement or even to confirm it was the paper's desire that it be kept confidential. But Jewell's lawyer Wood said it wasn't his client's idea.

Jewell also sued the Walt Disney Co., Capital Cities/ABC, and WABC-AM Radio in New York. He sued the radio station for comments that talk show host Michael Lebron, broadcasting under the name of "Lionel," made when the security guard became a reported focus of the investigation.

Jewell, seeking $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, contended that as a result of Lionel's statements on the air, he "lost income and has suffered a permanent impairment to his ability to obtain or maintain employment, particular in his chosen profession of law enforcement."

In a July 31, 1996 show, Lionel allegedly defamed Jewell by such statements as:

"He did it... he probably did it."

"He probably will be arrested."

"It's very sad. People lost lives and people were injured by [Mr. Jewell]."

"An arrest will happen in minutes."

Lionel, who is no longer broadcasting on WABC, which station officials say has nothing to do with the suit, was never one to mince words. The suit alleged that he referred to Jewell as "a typical rent-a-cop freako security guard loser-mentality who always wanted to be somebody, who drives around in a used police car and has the scanner, lights and uniforms. A little loser."

On an August 1, 1996, broadcast, which Jewell's lawyers claimed demonstrated "gross irresponsibility," Lionel declared, "He is guilty. Execute him. Stick a bomb up his butt."

Despite the extreme nature of Lionel's opinions about a suspect who had not been arrested, charged or convicted, the station lawyers settled for $5,000 and described the outcome as "a nuisance value settlement."

"It was opinion, not journalism," one spokesman said.

As for the central journalistic players, both NBC and CNN have reached financial settlements with Jewell, who blames his trial-by-media for lack of progress toward a law enforcement career. NBC paid a little over $500,000, while CNN refuses to comment on reports that it paid slightly less. So vulnerable did the two organizations consider themselves to be that Jewell's lawyers did not have to take the formal step of filing suit in order to obtain settlements. Adding to the spectacle, the two networks refuse to discuss their settlement decisions-a position neither they nor any other news organization would consider acceptable in others. But the industry source familiar with NBC's reasoning said, "The key ingredient was that confidential sources were going to be at the center of the litigation. It was going to be highly, highly unpredictable litigation."

He said the network reasoned that while its legal position was strong, the case would have been decided "by a local judge and a local jury, and they would be asking 'Who are the sources and what did they say?'"

The settlements—NBC's for more than $500,000 and CNN under that figure—came without any retraction by NBC or CNN. "The journalists simply weren't prepared to do that," the industry source said.

Potentially more costly than all of these is Jewell's pending libel suit against the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, flagship of Cox Enterprises' newspaper chain. Jewell's attorney, L. Lin Wood, contends it was the Journal-Constitution that set off the avalanche of coverage that destroyed his client's reputation. Throughout the 1996 summer Olympics, the Journal-Constitution had published "Extra" editions frequently. On July 30, at around 4 p.m., the paper replated such an edition with a 10-paragraph story in the lead position on Page One reporting that the heretofore-heroic security guard had become the focus of the bombing investigation.

The story in Atlanta's preeminent newspaper was followed by a stampede of similar reports by other news organizations—encouraged in part by timely calls from Journal-Constitution editors to the Associated Press, CNN and the Cox chain's own newspaper and TV properties. Such touting of exclusive, late-breaking stories has become accepted practice; CNN displayed the Journal-Constitution front page and read the piece verbatim.

Jewell's suit is winding through the Georgia courts, with the likelihood that it will thread its way through the federal system as well. The process could take several years, unless it is cut short by judicial decree or a settlement. The newspaper's lawyers have won some early victories, contending that one of Jewell's arguments consists of "nothing more than trite 'news media' bashing and the unfathomable suggestion that because there are now more members of the press than in the past, each should have less freedom." But the suit carries the possibility of huge financial penalties for the newspaper. It might also rewrite the law of libel if the reporters are forced to reveal its sources or spend time in jail. And the right of reporters to protect confidential sources is at issue too.

Conclusions to the Case
Jewell's case—and the way it was handled by print and broadcast media alike—has raised profoundly disturbing questions about the problem of maintaining traditional standards of accuracy and fairness in the world of modern journalism.

Even L. Lin Wood, the personal injury lawyer who represents Jewell, advances this point, though to indict the media, not exonerate it.

"We live in a new media era—an era where satellite dishes on the roofs of private homes are common—an era where access to literally a world of information is only the touch of a home computer keyboard away," he said in court documents filed in connection with the Jewell episode. "The days of a handful of local television channels and local radio stations are gone forever. Now local television stations and even the major television networks compete against ever-increasing numbers of cable channels, satellite channels and pay-per-view channels. Several 'all-news' channels broadcast 24 hours a day. Television and the Internet blend together in interactive news channels and almost every major newspaper operates, or is affiliated with, an Internet website.

"In this new media era, programmers face the pressure of filling thousands of hours of air time with new and interesting faces and new and interesting stories. Private individuals connected with almost any event deemed by the media to have some measure of news or entertainment value are increasingly finding themselves the subjects of a multitude of media requests for interviews as the media struggles to fill air time with different faces, different stories or different angles to known stories. The competition is intense and the profit potential is enormous."

The result, Wood said, is "an environment where mistakes about individuals are published with increasing frequency and instantaneously broadcast and published to the world."

Yet it is one thing to note that the world has changed and another to leap to the conclusion that standards of professional responsibility must inevitably fall. To say the news media can no longer meet their traditional standards of fairness, accuracy and professional responsibility is to say that they can no longer play their accustomed role in American society. If that were to be the case, then news reporting as we have known and honored it would almost certainly disappear. There would no longer be a compelling reason for it to exist.

To begin with, the threat posed by the Jewell case to the future of journalism is not confined to the possibility of public sanctions or loss of credibility, or even future restrictions on the ability of reporters to cover criminal or other government inquiries. While comparable feeding frenzies may erupt again, it is possible—especially at the local level and in less heavily publicized cases—that the opposite will occur: that media leaders will engage in self-censorship and rein in their reporters, not from a heightened sense of professional responsibility but from fear of litigation. Already, the Jewell case has imposed on several news organizations the kind of financial costs that can discourage vigorous reporting, especially in the corporate environment in which most such organizations now exist.

Additional Question: the "Voice of God" Approach
A subsidiary element of the question of verification is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's unusual approach to anonymous sources. Time permitting, it might be worth some discussion.

Journal-Constitution Managing Editor Walter approved using the "Voice of God" approach rather than relying on anonymous sources.

What are the pros and cons of that decision? What do you think of it?

BACKGROUND: Here is how Walter explained the Voice of God decision:

"I felt, again, the physical activity was what gave it its weight and the word 'sources' would detract from that and also get us on a slope that I didn't particularly want us to get on, which was how key a suspect is he.... this is what he became by nightfall in the other (news) agency accounts, the lead suspect, or a key suspect, anonymous sources said. So I didn't want to—I didn't think that was fair, and I felt that was in violation of our sources policy. So that is why I didn't raise using the word because once you use it, once you start introducing sources, then you can have those sources do anything you want. They can speculate wildly. And so I felt safe, I felt better without that word in there."

What do you think of Walter's explanation?

ANALYSIS: How key a suspect? If he had doubts about that, how could he justify rushing into print with such a story at all, especially under a banner headline in a replate edition? And especially when it was clear from the reporting that at least the Atlanta police sources, and possibly federal law enforcement sources as well, were providing second-hand information. None of them seem to have been inside the team directly involved with looking at Jewell; they were merely passing along what they had been told by others whose level of knowledge is similarly unknown.

Walter also defends the decision to avoid anonymous sources and use the "Voice of God" technique on another ground: It was "explanatory material to the physical evidence we were about to report, the agents knocking at the door. The physical evidence was what gave it its weight."

Does this hold?

ANALYSIS: We see several problems with Walter's explanation.

In fact, the AJC does rely on sources that would not let their names be used for perhaps the key information in the story, the existence of a profile—which is the basis of police suspicions and provides the supposed motive. As far as could be learned, the AJC had not seen nor read this profile when it wrote the first story.

The "physical activity" that the AJC had independently verified, does not go very far. In total it was A) Unmarked cars in front of Jewell's apartment. B) Police were reviewing videotapes and 911 audiotapes to see if there was anything identifying Jewell as the bomber. C) That he had resigned from two law enforcement jobs and had received bomb training. D) That Jewell had refused to open the door when an AJC reporter knocked.

This physical activity merely confirms that police had suspicions about Jewell. It does little to directly link Jewell to being the bomber.

Again, the paper's lawyers offer a counter argument: that Walter used the physical activity to confirm that Jewell was a suspect, not to suggest he was guilty.

Later, Walter added that the fact that the FBI's knock on the door occurred after the story came out is of little matter:

"As far as the public is concerned, it doesn't matter whether that was two minutes after our presses rolled or 20 minutes before our presses rolled," he maintained in an interview conducted by Carrie Teegardin, the Journal-Constitution writer assigned to prepare a piece on how the paper covered the Jewell story. Teegardin's story was not published, but her recordings of interviews became a part of the court record in the libel suit. Instead of printing Teegardin's story, two weeks before Jewell was told he was not a target, the paper published without comment a critical analysis of the media's handling of the case by Alicia C. Shepard, a contributing editor of American Journalism Review. Without endorsing Shepard's findings, Journal-Constitution attorney Canfield said the fact that the analysis was done by an outsider, not a staffer, figured in the paper's decision to print it instead of Teegardin's story.

In his Teegardin interview, Walter said: "Our non-source policy says you have got to have the approval of a managing editor. In this case, I granted the use of those three Voice of God things as explanatory material to the physical evidence we were about to report, the agents knocking at the door."

Walter told Teegardin, not for attribution, that in retrospect he was bothered by the second paragraph of the story, which said Jewell "fits the profile of the lone bomber."

"That is one of those things that I would rewrite if I had the time to rewrite it," Walter said. "It reads wrong … even the word 'the' is wrong. Not the lone bomber, not this lone bomber."

Ms Teegardin: "Right, of a lone bomber really?"

Walter: "Right"

It is not clear what the derivation for "Voice of God" is. But writing in "Inside Scoop," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's house organ on Feb. 14, 1994, two years before Jewell fell victim to the technique, Managing Editor Walter used the term in explaining why the newspaper's policy discourages blind sources.

"On a few occasions," he said, "we've run an "unsourced" story by using the Voice of God: "Maynard Jackson will announce today he won't run for another term."

"In any of these cases, this means we are staking the paper's reputation on the accuracy of this flat statement, so we'd better be right. But those are the exceptions."

"The use of blind sourcing distances us from the reader," he went on. "It says, 'I know something I'm not going to share with you (i.e., the source of this material).' In a time when media credibility is generally low, I believe we should try to show readers that we're open, above-board, with all our cards on the table."

How different is this for the reader, if the information is attributed to "a source," or better yet, a law enforcement source or a defense attorney? Remember, the reader may be able to detect the source's likely bias, where the source is coming from.

Walter's decisions offer valuable insight into the way news organizations and law enforcement agencies can begin to interact with one another in potentially dangerous ways when both are caught up in a high-profile, high-pressure situation. It is in just such situations, of course, that news organizations are most in need of clear professional standards of conduct. What seems to have happened on July 30 is that, behind the scenes, both the news media and law enforcement agents were talking to each other in ways that caused both to get ahead of themselves and make significant mistakes.

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