Bryan Seymour

KEY FACTS

BIASED SOURCES

Seymour used his position as a “reporter” to spread lies provided by known bigoted apostates.

Bryan Seymour

KEY FACTS

DISRUPTING RELIGIOUS SERVICES

Seymour showed up unannounced at Scientology Churches, walking in with cameras rolling and intentionally disrupting religious services.

Bryan Seymour

KEY FACTS

JOINS KIDNAPPERS

Joined with anti-religious kidnappers in a second attack on a woman they had previously failed to “deprogram.”

BIASED MEDIA PROPAGANDIST

Bryan Seymour

Bryan Seymour is the poster boy for what can happen when a knowingly biased reporter is allowed to use his credentials as a “journalist” to mount a concerted attack against a religion.

A reporter with Australian television, Seymour has been producing stories about the Church of Scientology since 2008. He has used his position to spread lies provided by knowingly biased sources, to harass staff members of Scientology Churches, and to intentionally disrupt the activities of parishioners of those Churches.

In 2008, Seymour concocted a story claiming the teenage children of Church staff members were “mistreated” because they were homeschooled and volunteering at the local Church. The truth was both parents and children had chosen homeschooling over poor conditions and low educational standards in local public schools. For a few hours a week, the young people did volunteer work at the Church because they wanted to contribute.

Seymour’s false allegations came from a handful of disgruntled former staff and from members of Anonymous, the cyberterrorist group whose members have been arrested and jailed for launching attacks on websites and threatening physical harm to Scientologists and others around the world—including the Australian government.

With no evidence to support his imaginary bigoted story, Seymour barged in unannounced at local Australian Churches with cameras rolling, intentionally disrupting religious services.

With no evidence to support his imaginary bigoted story, Seymour barged in unannounced at local Australian Churches with cameras rolling, intentionally disrupting religious services.

The resulting story consisted of egregiously false and inflammatory misinformation peppered with hate speech on the Scientology religion, its parishioners and their care of their children—all designed to incite public hostility against Scientologists. This is the essence of propaganda disguised as objective journalism.

In 2010, Seymour was producing another story. This time the source was a former staff member and anti-Scientologist removed from several staff positions for being incompetent and destructive and who subsequently departed unannounced. Seymour’s “source” obliged him by parroting a litany of falsehoods about individual Scientologists and the Church leadership that had appeared elsewhere.

Three years later, Seymour visited the United States where he severely overstepped the bounds of legitimate journalism. His first action was to reprise his 2008 tactic of arriving unannounced with cameras rolling, this time intentionally disrupting staff and parishioners at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles.

A few days later, Seymour and his crew ambushed a Scientologist and staff member who only weeks earlier had been the target of an attempted “deprogramming” by her brother and several ex-Scientologists who held her against her will and attempted to force her to recant her religious beliefs. She escaped, shaken and traumatized.

Now her brother lured her to a meeting at a local gas station where Seymour and his crew aided and abetted the deprogrammers by ambushing her with a barrage of inflammatory, bigoted lies about Scientology. The young woman managed to again escape despite attempts to block her from leaving.

Seymour’s hate-stunt had nothing to do with “reporting.” Rather, it was anti-religious harassment of the most deplorable kind—Seymour’s specialty, the lowest form of “gotcha” yellow journalism.

These are but examples. Seymour continues to stoop to his brand of uniformly derogatory and bigoted attacks, gleefully providing a forum for gratuitous anti-Scientology hate speech. Never mind that the claims he is broadcasting have been thoroughly debunked. Propagandists such as Seymour disregard the truth any time it gets in the way of their anti-religious agenda.