WUSF ~ The Church of Scientology is deploying a new weapon in its three-decade battle with the St. Petersburg Times: award-winning investigative journalists. Those reporters completed their own review of the newspaper's coverage of Scientology, but church officials won’t release it.
In 1980, The St. Petersburg Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the secretive religion, headquartered in Clearwater. Since then, church officials have said the newspaper’s coverage is unfair. So church officials decided to do something about it, according to spokesman Tommy Davis.
But, The report has been turned over to the Church, which is refusing to release it to the public. But that didn’t stop Davis from speaking about the report to Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz, who broke this story Monday. Davis called the report “highly critical” of the Times.
In their statement, the reporters said Davis “did not accurately portray the full scope of our work” and urged the Church to release the report. But they say they can’t talk about their findings, because of their contract with the Church.[full report]
WUSF/NPR: Listen to Full Interviews
with Tommy Davis, Neil Brown and Steve Weinberg.
Tip of the DC-8 wingtip to xenuTV for the heads-up.
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