After decades of digging into the Church of Scientology, reporters and editors at the St. Petersburg Times are accustomed to being denounced by its leaders.So, who's going to publish these investigative reports on the Florida newspaper? Other newspapers? Probably not. The Scientologists will be left with issuing press releases that will interest few if any media outlets.
But they find it unsettling that three veteran journalists -- a Pulitzer Prize winner, a former "60 Minutes" producer, and the former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors -- are taking the church's money to examine the paper's conduct.
While the journalists have promised an independent review, the Times has refused to cooperate, saying their work will be used to fuel the church's ongoing campaign against the Florida paper.
"I ultimately couldn't take this request very seriously because it's a study bought and paid for by the Church of Scientology," says Executive Editor Neil Brown. "Candidly," he adds, "I was surprised and disappointed that journalists who I understand to have an extensive background in investigative reporting would think it's appropriate to ask me or our news organization to talk about that reporting while (a) it's ongoing, and (b) while they're being paid to ask these questions by the very subjects of our reporting."
It's pretty much just an attempt at intimidation, and based up the reaction from the St. Petersburg Times, it's not working.
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Really, all the Church of Scientology is doing the same thing it's done countless times before: it's hired private detectives to try and dig up some sort of dirt on those it considers enemies. (Just as Hubbard instructed, of course: "If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace.")
The only way this differs from the standard Scientology modus operandi is that instead of hiring actual private detectives, they're hiring journalists, so that they can pretend that this is some sort of "search for truth" instead of what it really is, a way to harass and intimidate.
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