Filed under: BBC, John Sweeney, MI6, Scientology, Scientology & Me, Scientology And Me, Secret Service
I just ran across the claim that the BBC is an arm of the British foreign intelligence, MI6. That is something like the CIA but more James Bondish, I guess. John Sweeney, with “a license to yell”…! What a great “cover” for his “researches” in Africa. Clever, clever, but seriously, there had been rumors that BBC reported 9/11 even before it happened, seemingly out of a confusion on time differences between the US and UK. What a scary thought, that my YouTube clips have been attacked by MI6!
Let’s face it: Scientology won the PR battle against the BBC. They had the faster, better and more impinging arguments, and they were – rare in such type of battles – true.
The BBC is better to reform. As Kevin Marsh, senior editor of the BBC, puts it: “The scientologists have done us a service. Their rebuttal campaign aimed at John Sweeney’s Panorama investigation is a foretaste – a particularly well-funded and well-produced foretaste – of the feedback firestorm beginning to engulf all of Big Journalism.”
Some anti-cultists seem to be troubled by that. Within hours after the first news reports broke about BBC Reporter Sweeney’s meltdown dozens if not hundreds of allegedly new users registered on YouTube. None of them contribed videos or own research but doggedly stuck to the task to give harrassing and insulting statements against Scientologists. This tactics of emulating “public outrage” by faking various identities is not new, but the amount – more than 8,000 comments in less than two days, most of them around the lower IQ levels of “You @@#$#@ cult!” – can be considered unprecedented even on YouTube.
Murder threats and insults hit the video clips of public Scientologist John Wood and others who had shown side in the ongoing PR battle on YouTube and caused them to bar the commenting function on their clips. Time to do a test.
This author was registering his own ID - 99buzzard – and put up some clips. I was promptly found by some of the roving fanatics: User mickey5088 (0 videos, favorising videos like “Me So Horny“) send a message laying out his mind:
“hey scientology pig
i know you’ve been watching all the anti-scientology comments and videos in the wake of the bbc interview. Don’t you see? You people are a joke. Nobody takes you seriously and e i know you’ve been watching all the anti-scientology comments and videos in the wake of the bbc interview. Don’t you see? You people are a joke. Nobody takes you seriously and even when you send your agents out to follow people or set up a youtube account it still ends in failure. You people are a cult and your members are clearly deranged. your story of lord zenu and volcanos and other bullshit makes me laugh out loud. you are truly pathetic and i hope i’ll be around to see your loser organization implode from a scandal that i know is comming because your leaders are all criminals and will get what is comming to them soon.”
YouTubers like “android32″ follow the party line (imagine some acne-studded kid sitting there drooling over his keyboard in a middle-class home, typing words of wisdom into YouTube): “Scientology is the only cult that doesn’t do us the favor of committing mass suicide.”
Brandnew ID “freespeach2all”, registering minutes before giving his comment, adds: “I am discusted at these scintologist cult members.” and promotes a hate site on Scientology (like most of the”new” users).
What do we learn out of this? Well, journalists should not rely on anonymous “feedbacks” from the internet but in the Age of the Internet have an extra eye on who they actually talking to.
Further reading: New York Times, May 14, 2007, 12:32 pm
Scientologists Ambush the BBC
A 41-second video of a BBC reporter shouting at someone in rather unhinged fashion was posted on YouTube late last week as part of a campaign to discredit a documentary the British network is preparing about The Church of Scientology.Other video clips and a Web site called “BBC Panorama Exposed” level a host of criticisms against the BBC, including a claim that the BBC orchestrated a protest demonstration against the church and that the protest included a “terrorist death threat,” according to The Telegraph, the British daily newspaper.
Another criticism came from the mouth of the reporter who blew his top, John Sweeney. “There are people there who claim salaries who frankly are morons,” he said in one clip.
All the footage came from Scientologist cameras. The Guardian called it “one of the first examples of ‘video ambushing’ where organisations being investigated turn the camera on the film makers.” More from the newspaper:
The Church of Scientology, whose members include the Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta, shadowed the Panorama team in America with its own camera crew. It has made a ‘counter documentary’, attacking Sweeney’s methods, and distributed 100,000 DVDs to MPs, civil servants, religious groups, media organisations and business leaders.
(That would be “MPs” as in members of parliament, not military police.)
The BBC responded with its own YouTube clip showing a prominent Scientologist getting angry at Mr. Sweeney, though not reaching anything like his decibel level. The BBC also posted a news article on its own site about the shouting match, and the head of the Panorama program, speaking in an interview with The Telegraph, denied the other accusations made by the Scientologists.
As for the leather-lunged Mr. Sweeney, he has apologized for the display of temper, and even sounded embarrassed about it. “I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it, it makes me cringe,” he said.
