It seems that many of you are enjoying this site thanks in large part to Meg's wedding photos. While you're here, you might as well enjoy a little more:
Richard Jewell, the man who was accused of the being the 1996 Olympic Park bomber, died today. He was relatively young, 44, but for the last 10 years of his life his name was smeared because everyone thought he was the one behind the plot that killed one person and injured 11. He wasn't. Eric Rudolph was, and he has since been jailed.
Nevertheless, Jewell spent a lot of time suing the assorted media organizations who libeled him, and rightly so. One of those places was the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Today, not long after the AP ran an obituary about Jewell, the AJC ran their own story. Although it was cloaked as an obit, the newspaper defended their shoddy reporting skills. The AJC still stands behind the sources that told them Jewell was a suspect, and made a point to mention that the newspaper never settled with Jewell, unlike other places that did.
While it's true the newspaper never settled, pointing this out in an obit about Jewell falls into the category of Extremely Bad Taste.
Anyone who has ever taken a media ethics class knows that the Richard Jewell case comes up time and time again as to why you have to be incredibly careful when using anonymous sources, especially during a police investigation. But what does the AJC care? It's not like it cost them anything.
