Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 12, 2010

"The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" is a Time magazine article highly critical of Scientology that was first published on May 6, 1991, as an eight-page cover story. Written by investigative journalist Richard Behar, the article was later published in Reader's Digest in October 1991. Behar's article covers topics including: L. Ron Hubbard (pictured) and the development of Scientology, its controversies over the years and history of litigation, conflict with psychiatry and the IRS, the suicide of a Scientologist, its status as a religion, and its business dealings. After the article's publication, the Church of Scientology mounted a public relations campaign to inform the public of what it felt were falsehoods in the piece. It took out advertisements in USA Today for twelve weeks, and Church leader David Miscavige was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline about what he considered to be an objective bias by the article's author. The Church of Scientology brought a libel suit against Time Warner and Behar, and sued Reader's Digest in multiple countries in Europe in an attempt to stop the article's publication there. The suit against Time Warner was dismissed in 1996, and the Church of Scientology's petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case was denied in 2001. Behar received awards in honor of his work on the article, including the Gerald Loeb Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, and the Conscience-in-Media Award. (more...)

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