This page maintained by
David Gerard.
Press articles about Scientology in Australia
See also:
Information for reporters
"Since Scientologists know how the Fourth Estate operates, it's time the
journalist had a chance to learn some of the attitudes, rules, tactics, and
tricks known only to Scientology" - Robert
Vaughn Young
"See the matter through to a completion including the discrediting of
the attacker." - 1974 CoS policy letter
- Scientology from inside
out: A former insider reveals strategies for managing the news
media by Robert Vaughn Young (from
The Quill, The Magazine of the Society of Professional
Journalists, Nov-Dec 1993, p38-41). RVY handled media and public relations for
Scientology for twenty years.
- Training to deal with
reporters - Once you've dealt with a few CoS PR officers, you'll
find it's like dealing with the same person over and over - seeing the
Training Routines they use will help explain why.
- Tallulah's commentary - why
Scientology PR people so often come across as being completely insane. "I
just can't resist commenting on some of these - I swear, there are real live
media trainers out there who charge BIG BUCKS for this stuff."
- Hostile
Contacts - How to get rid of a hostile reporter. "A newspaper
publishes its third entheta [critical] article. Legal plays a hard
line and PR plays the part of the peacemaker until a retraction and legal
settlement is made. Documentation is then sent to all press, the Press
Council and journalists and individual reporters. The documentation has a plea
for reform and clean up of ethical standards. The result: the reporter in
question will no longer be on staff."
- Enemy
Names - how the CoS will attempt to ascertain your sources, so as
to attack them personally.
- See also Andreas Heldal-Lund's analysis of
Enemy Names.
- The CoS has been kind enough to verify Enemy Names with
legal threats - December and January. They really don't want
people reading this one.
- Attacks on
Scientology - the CoS views any investigation whatsoever as an
'attack'. "This is correct procedure: (1) Spot who is attacking us. (2)
Start Investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse using our own
professionals, not outside agencies. (3) Double curve our reply by saying we
welcome an investigation of them. (4) Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime
actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever tamely submit to an
investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way."
- Targets,
Defence - "Experience has shown that defense is only
effective when one sorties or attacks ... The vital targets on which we must
invest most of our time are: T1. Depopularizing the enemy to a point of total
obliteration. T2. Taking over the control or allegiance of the heads or
proprietors of all news media ..."
- Intelligence Specialist
Training Routine: TR-L - "Purpose: To train the student to
give a false statement with good TR-1. To train the student to outflow false
data effectively."
- Black
Propaganda - "Black propaganda is a covert communication of
false data intended to injure, impede or destroy the activity or life of
another person, group or nation, usually issued from a false or removed source
from the actual instigator." This one should be correlated with Attacks on
Scientology above.
- Perry Scott's commentary
- "Well thanks, Ron. Now I get it. The other people lie but we don't. Our
propaganda is merely dirty and not black ... Hubbard wrote Guardian Orders.
These orders are being recycled for use by OSA. There should be no doubt that
the two organizations are the same; the names were changed to confuse the
innocent."
- Operations
Officer - this gives the lie to the frequent assertion that local
CoS offices are not linked to the US offices. "Ops Officer is responsible
for the planning, researching and carrying out of ops (planned and put
together locally and approved by US Ops or sent down from US) ... One
particular occupational hazard is that you are training these people to lie
well, deceive, be tricky."
- Robert Vaughn Young: Preparations for a press conference
during the FBI raids on Scientology in the late 1970s. "The press
conference was set for something like noon, so we only had a couple of hours
for all the preparation. Meanwhile, downstairs and at the end of the hall,
scores of FBI agents were prowling through offices and files, hauling boxes of
documents down the elevator."