Cover page in Time's issue: "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power"
Writer
Richard Behar
Categories
Investigative journalism
Frequency
Published in Time, May 1991 and Reader's Digest, October 1991
First issue
May 6, 1991
Country
United States
"The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" is an article, written in 1991 by U.S. investigative journalist Richard Behar, which is highly critical of Scientology. It was first published by Time magazine on May 6, 1991, as an eight-page cover story,[1][2] and was later published in Reader's Digest in October 1991.[3] Behar had previously published an article on Scientology in Forbes magazine. He stated that he was investigated by attorneys and private investigators affiliated with the Church of Scientology while researching the Time article, and that investigators contacted his friends and family as well. Behar's article covers topics including L. Ron Hubbard and the development of Scientology, its controversies over the years and history of litigation, conflict with psychiatry and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the suicide of Noah Lottick, its status as a religion, and its business dealings.
After the article's publication, the Church of Scientology mounted a public relations campaign to address issues 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. Miscavige alleged that the article was actually driven by the company Eli Lilly, because of Scientology's efforts against the drug Prozac. 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 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. The article has had ramifications in the current treatment of Scientology in the media, with some publications theorizing that journalists are wary of the litigation that Time Warner went through. The article has been cited by Anderson Cooper on CNN, in a story on Panorama's 2007 program "Scientology and Me" on the BBC, and has been used as a reference for background on the history of Scientology, in books from both the cult and new religious movement perspectives.
^Behar, Richard (May 6, 1991). "Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power". Time. pp. 50–57. Archived from the original on May 25, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
^Cite error: The named reference healy was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Behar, Richard; Burton, Thomas M. (October 1991). "A Dangerous Cult Goes Mainstream". Reader's Digest. pp. 87–92.
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