CNN The real-life journalist portrayed in the upcoming Clint Eastwood film, "Richard Jewell," is being defended by her former colleagues and the newspaper where she worked because they say she is unfairly depicted as a woman who traded sex for stories. Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.

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He was falsely suspected as the perpetrator of the event. While working as a security guard at the Olympic Park, he discovered a backpack containing three pipe bombs on the park grounds. Initially hailed by the media as a hero, Jewell was soon considered a suspect by the FBI and local law enforcement. Though never charged, he underwent a " trial by media ", which took a toll on his personal and professional life.
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He was born in Danville, Georgia. After the bombing, Jewell was seen as a hero but later he was viewed as a suspect , before being cleared. Jewell's case is considered an example of the damage that can be done by media reporting based on unreliable or incomplete information. Despite never being charged, the media continued to criticize Jewell and calling him the suspected bomber. Jewell was eventually found not guilty, and Eric Rudolph was later found to have been the bomber. In , Governor Sonny Perdue publicly thanked Jewell on behalf of the State of Georgia for saving the lives of those at the Olympics. Jewell died on August 29, of heart failure caused by diabetes in Woodbury, Georgia at age In , Clint Eastwood directed a movie about him titled Richard Jewell.
The former security guard was working at Centennial Olympic Park when a pipe bomb exploded. Shortly after the bomb blast, which resulted in two deaths and over people injured, Jewell was named a suspect, and for weeks, his life was at the center of a media firestorm. Twenty-three years later, the story of Jewell, who died in , will be depicted in the eponymous film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell and Kathy Bates as his mother, Bobi Jewell. Richard Jewell was working as a security guard at Centennial Park on the evening of July 27, On that night, there was a Jack Mack and the Heart Attack concert and "tens of thousands" of people were in attendance, according to Tom Davis, a retired police officer who was stationed at the park with Jewell. Thirty minutes before the bomb went off, a man called warning of a bomb in the park and saying that it would detonate in 30 minutes. It released shrapnel everywhere once it detonated. I remember seeing things falling from the sky as I started to get my wits about me.