Reporters Need to Learn to Apologize

Don’t laugh. The media once knew how to do this. The best example is the Richard Jewell story. In 1996, after Jewell, a security guard, discovered a bomb at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park and helped clear the crowd, he was declared a hero by the press. 

Days later, reporter Kathy Scruggs was told by a law enforcement source that Jewell was the FBI’s foremost suspect. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran the story that made Jewell the villain. CNN reported the AJC article, and for the next 88 days, Jewell was hunted by reporters. He was one of the first victims of what would become known as “trial by media.” When his name was finally cleared, Jewell, who died in 2007, sued the New York Post, NBC News, and CNN and settled with all three. 

In what today would be considered an astonishing move, CNN producer Henry Schuster actually wrote an apology to Jewell: “I made Richard Jewell famous — and ruined his life.”