I noticed a few weeks ago ads on news.com.au appearing that looked a bit on the suss side. They appeared to feature some guy I wasn’t familiar with and something about ‘Anderson Cooper: A History of Lies’ and a ‘Freedom Special Report’.

Not particularly enticed I ignored the ad but it began to pop up with somewhat of a fierce regularity. Eventually one day curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a look.

Turns out Scientology are behind the campaign…

Back in late March CNN’s Anderson Cooper ran an expose on Scientology. Titled Scientology: A history of violence the series fan for five nights and featured interviews of critics of Scientology as well as Scientology members themselves.

What followed in the months after the show aired was a response from the church of Scientology itself. In true the church directly retaliated against Cooper, AC360 and Cooper’s main interviewees.

As part of the FreedomMag Scientology arm, the church put out three videos and three text articles attempting to rip Cooper and AC360 to shreds. Personally I feel the videos achieved the complete opposite but you can make up your own mind about that.

The following is a compilation of footage from the three videos. Admittedly whilst viewing the footage and (sloppily) editing it I had to keep reminding myself that this was the work of  a religious organisation.


It’s certainly quite full on, isn’t it. What irks me is that this type of media is produced under the guise of religious freedom. Scientology is well known for their ‘Fair Game’ policy and the Cooper/AC360 videos particularly exemplify the practice.

Critics are everywhere in life and by no means should those being criticised have no recourse to engage their critics. Is producing a website with the sole intention of running a smear campaign against your critics an appropriate response for a religious organisation though?

A lot of corporations would no doubt love to engage in these sorts of practices but for the most part, the law prevents them from doing so. Why is then that under the guise of religious freedom such acts are allowed to go unchecked?

Despite my personal disbelief in religion it’s apparent that an image of ‘good’ is usually prevalent, no matter the creed. From time to time people misrepresent various religions however and tarnish what was otherwise a good name.

For some long standing religions there have been thousands of these types of people throughout the centuries.

The difference with Scientology however is that here you have the religion and church itself advocating gutter tactics to get its point across. Anyone who’s debated before (or had an argument for that matter) will tell you that stooping to the level of personal attacking whilst completely ignoring any arguments presented to you is a sign you’ve probably already lost.

If there were still valid points to refute and challenge then why would you waste time on individuals?

In sport we call this playing the man, not the ball. It appears in religion, it’s called Fair Game.

If this is what Scientology has done with the limited footage they were given (Cooper wisely prohibited Scientology from independently filming him), one can only wonder what would have been contained had Scientology have been given unrestricted access to CNN studios.

No doubt any future investigations by the media are most likely to take a dim view on such antics. For Scientology however the point seems lost. I’m sure the next time a prime time reporter is preparing a story on them the church will once again offer open (recorded and controlled) access to the church and then wonder why they get turned down.


Footnote: The entire Scientology AC360 clips in their entirety can be watched below. Yes they all follow the same blueprint of trashing Anderson Cooper, then launching into how great Scientology is and then finishing up by trashing Anderson Cooper some more. Oh and the music is irritating too.

You’ve been warned.


In the interest of fairness I’ve also included the complete AC360 report, Scientology: A History of Violence below too;

1. Russia’s Scientology book ban doesn’t go far enough
2. Xenophon’s Scientology Senate inquiry fails, what now?
3. Scientology Soldier's Sizzling Suicide
4. The push to criminalize Scientology in Australia
5. Unanswered Questions: Scientology and Edward McBride