MEDIA & ETHICS | MARCH 20, 2022

Sunday World Publishes Two-Month-Old Interview by Anti-Scientology “Obsessed” Podcaster as News

On March 19, the Irish tabloid Sunday World published an article by Jenny Claffey, a 32-year-old podcaster who states that after she came upon a fringe hate site, she became “obsessed” with the prospect of interviewing an anti-Scientologist.

Microphone — Photo by Raphaelstrada/Flickr.com, Creative Commons

The article’s news peg is that, over one and a half months ago, Claffey interviewed Pete Griffiths, a man known for spending his time on welfare stalking and harassing Scientologists in Ireland for two years until a court legally restrained him from doing so. In 2014, Griffiths egged on and filmed a man physically assaulting a Scientologist distributing free drug prevention literature in Dublin—harassment for which he was fined €2,000 in damages and made the subject of a permanent injunction.

Griffiths today limits his harassment activities to posting anti-Scientology hate speech online.

Like Islamophobes and antisemites, Griffiths’ futile goal is to “end” the faith he targets, stating his driven purpose is to “just keep people out” of the Scientology religion. Griffiths today limits his harassment activities to posting anti-Scientology hate speech online.

This is the individual with whom Claffey states she sought an interview for his “insight into Scientology from a human perspective.”

STAND condemns the Sunday World’s effort to market the bigotry of two anti-Scientologists as clickbait.

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