Criticism
A 1992 report found the publication was not a profitable operation for the Church of Scientology.
The journalistic integrity of Freedom magazine has been criticized at various times for bias against perceived enemies of Scientology. In one case, facts in the magazine's 1995 compilation The Rise of Hatred and Violence, which concerned the church's dispute with Germany, were found to be "grossly distorted." Stephen Kent in the Marburg Journal of Religion wrote that the magazine's comparison of the dispute with 1930s Nazism had "general parallels with tactics advocated in the brainwashing manual," Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbooks on Psychopolitics, published in 1955 by the Church of Scientology.
During Scientology's dispute and litigation against the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), Freedom Magazine was noted for running a sensationalized story headlined "CAN: The serpent of hatred, intolerance, violence and death." In their 2006 book Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, authors Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft cite Freedom Magazine articles about CAN as an example of "the invective emanating from Scientology".
In a 1997 case, while the Clearwater Police Department was investigating the suspicious death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson, the magazine sent reporters to research alleged racism in the police department. The department said that Freedom magazine reporter Tom Whittle's premise was "preposterous" and noted the magazine sought information about officers who investigated complaints about Scientologists.
Read more about this topic: Freedom Magazine
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)