As a journalist, seeing other reporters portrayed in movies can be both thrilling and frustrating. A movie like Spotlight makes you proud of the field, but on the flip side, a movie like Richard Jewell comes along and makes you squirm in your seat knowing how wrong it gets female journalists. The movie includes a great performance from the title character played by Paul Walter Hauser, but one character, or should we say characterization, spoils the whole movie. Actress Olivia Wilde plays the late Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs. Wilde’s acting is fine, but the way Scruggs is written is a travesty to the field of journalism and to female reporters. The AJC writes:

The movie version of Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, is depicted as someone who relies on illicit liaisons with sources to gain information. “The AJC’s reporter is reduced to a sex-trading object in the film,” the letter says. “Such a portrayal makes it appear that the AJC sexually exploited its staff and/or that it facilitated or condoned offering sexual gratification to sources in exchange for stories. That is entirely false and malicious, and it is extremely defamatory and damaging.”

Even if you don’t know the real way Scruggs worked on the Jewell story, the character just feels so wrong in an era where #MeToo has been trending. Wilde flirts with Jon Hamm’s FBI character to get information and it’s implied the two sleep together after she gets him to give her a scoop. Wilde herself has responded to criticism about the way the character was written saying:

Contrary to a swath of recent headlines, I do not believe that Kathy “traded sex for tips”. Nothing in my research suggested she did so, and it was never my intention to suggest she had. That would be an appalling and misogynistic dismissal of the difficult work she did. The perspective of the fictional dramatization of the story, as I understood it, was that Kathy, and the FBI agent who leaked false information to her, were in a pre-existing romantic relationship, not a transactional exchange of sex for information.

She continued writing:

I cannot speak for the creative decisions made by the filmmakers, as I did not have a say in how the film was ultimately crafted, but it’s important to me that I share my personal take on the matter.

If it was fictional dramatization why not at least change the character’s name? After all, Scruggs passed away in 2001 and isn’t here to defend herself. Luckily she does have others trying to set the record straight,  including AJC Editor Kevin Riley. 

Perhaps the moviemakers didn’t want to get the facts straight. The New York Times spoke to the reporter who “shared a byline for the July 1996 article naming Mr. Jewell as a suspect with Ron Martz.” Martz says he wasn’t contacted by anyone working o the movie. Martz stated, “that he had not been contacted by anybody working on the film and that its portrayal of his colleague was false.”

“She could be flirtatious, but she wouldn’t have done that sort of thing, because she was very conscious of her role as a reporter and she wanted to be known as a top-notch reporter… That sort of portrayal of her, it’s an insult not only to her, but to just about any other woman who’s been a reporter.”

The salacious storyline certainly hasn’t helped the movie’s bottom line. It’s made just $13 million dollars worldwide since it was released two weeks ago. Watch more from the Today Show above.

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