The Press, Scientology and Accuracy

It is amazing to see the amount of nonsense spewed out by the press these days. In my younger, naive days I actually thought (don't laugh) that reporters cared about accuracy and truth. I had that idea thoroughly squashed in the early 80s when I was traveling in a train seated by a newspaper reporter. I asked him about his job and to my astonishment he openly admitted that he wrote the stories he was told to write and facts, truth and accuracy were not important.

Years later I read an article by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, that talked about the press and the rules they follow to print a story. Here is a quote from the article:

To be printed a story must contain one or more of these things:

1. Harm (blood, violence, damage, death, scandal)
2. Sex
3. Money
4. Big Names
5. The story must be written to invalidate something
6. The story must contain a controversy
7. A story must contain two opposing forces

If you take a look at any mainstream news article you will see these elements. As Hubbard observed:

You could be elected Queen of the May and the headline would be "Controversy Rips Queen Election, Sexual Bias Hinted".

As a Scientologist I see this in the definitions the press give for it and their crazy versions of what Scientologists believe. The truth of what Scientology is and what Scientologists believe doesn't contain any of the above elements of a story so they rarely print it.

For a simple and accurate description try: What is Scientology?