If something like this happened now and was uncovered I’m imagining not only would it get 24/7 coverage on CNN etc but the public would go crazy with interest. I’m thinking every building remotely associated with Scientology would be raided by the government and everyone even close to high up would be wanted on warrants.
Why so quiet and unknown?
340 views and this is the first reply?
Whoa.
Maybe everyone thought of Scientologists as just a science fiction writer and Hollywood actors, nothing really to be worried about. The date for the court case is 1979. Media tends to focus on one story at a time, and at that time, it was the Iran hostage crisis along with the upcoming presidential election.
The government is cowed by the $cientologists, and the media even more so. Would any of the major media outlets want to tick off Tom Cruise and a cast of thousands?
OK, then explain South Park.
I won’t deny this was likely more true in the past, and that 1979 probably was a worse year to be anti-CoS than 2009, but with OTIII on TV it can’t be the case now.
It is an event that has always amazed me, both for the brazen act itself and the seemingly docile response.
Then again I am amazed anyone would fall for bullshit like scientology in the first place, or give them a huge wad of money and pass it off as being open minded - looking at you Will Smith, you ass.
Interesting to contrast this with the hugely profiled and completely ineffectual Soviet spy ring of twenty months ago.
Yes. And there were 1-3 major newspapers and 3 networks that acted as gatekeepers.
Nothing the scientologists did threatened national security in a meaningful way, so the story didn’t merit more than ~10 NYT articles, which I’m guessing it received based on the wiki references. The scandal affected both Republican and Democratic administrations, so no congressman was going to try to make hay with this. There’s also the giggle factor: anybody getting exercised about this weird story would have looked foolish. Scientology isn’t the mob.
Today we have 24 hour news channels which require something to chatter about. We also have partisan media with gullible audiences, so one party can be hammered disproportionately, while ignoring inconvenient facts about the other’s culpability. Back in the 1970s that didn’t fly: for one thing television and one-newspaper towns made efforts not to offend any segment of their audience.
Remember, when ABC merged their news division into the entertainment division during the 1970s, there was shock and dismay. After the cold war ended, seriousness didn’t seem so vitally important and talk radio and cable TV only accelerated the process.
Depends on whether you’re getting killed by the CoS, doesn’t it?
So they didn’t attack anyone and made no enemies at all? Sounds like really bad reportage, especially when it comes to investigative reportage.
The abuses of the CoS only came to light after the Internet forced them into the open; I doubt cable TV and talk radio had anything to do with that.
Good description of the situation. People hadn’t realized the size and extent that Scientology had grown to. They were considered a wacky west coast cult, and weren’t expected to ever exert power and influence.
Later, in 1993, the Church of Scientology wassuspected of ‘blackmailing’ IRS officialsto grant them tax exempt status as a religion. This status as a religion probably ended any serious investigation of their activities.