MEDIA WATCH | NEW YORK POST PAGE 6

NY Post Exploits Tragedy to Promote Hate

A family is grieving so you choose an antireligious campaigner as a “source” on this family and their beliefs. Your piece is a non-sequitur of the basest order. The words “obscene” and “repugnant” also come to mind.

July 17, 2020

Stephen Lynch
Editor-in-Chief
New York Post
slynch@nypost.com

Dear Mr. Lynch,

Your publication decided it was “acceptable” to run a piece of unadulterated hate regarding a tragic death. Your “story” is an agglomeration of hideous violations of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

I grew up in this church as did my sister. I have two small boys. We’re all doing great, thank you.

Scientologists are part of the society you live in. They may have served your latte, driven your Uber or done your taxes. We are not immune to the pressures and disasters of everyday life. We feel pain, joy, and all the rest of it. We’re people, in case you missed that.

Your “story” isn’t helping anyone. It’s part of the problem. And you know it.

My experience, and those of the thousands of Scientologists I have met in my lifetime, has been that this religion helps immeasurably. As a teenager in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I was surrounded by drugs and crime. It was my church that was a safe haven.

When I lived in L.A., a friend told me the story of a pal of his that committed suicide. After that, my friend quit drugs and began studying Scientology. That’s where his life started to turn around. He’s been married nearly 30 years, has two kids, and both he and his wife are successful artists.

Going back a couple generations, both his and my family got the one-two punch of discrimination for being Jewish and for being Scientologists. When a psycho shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue (Tree of Life) where my father and uncle were bar mitzvahed in the 1950s, it was graphically clear to me that this is the ultimate result of religious bigotry and hate.

Your “story” isn’t helping anyone. It’s part of the problem. And you know it.

It’s certainly not helping your reputation to ally yourself with the hate-fueled, modern version of the Brownshirts, 2020 Sturmabteilung.

I recommend you remove the story and issue a correction or apology.

Dylan Green
Portland, Oregon
STAND Member

Photo by Gil C./Shutterstock.com