Scientology leaders also went after individuals and other groups seeking to expose their questionable doings, such as the Cult Awareness Network, which had targeted the church with public warnings for years and went bankrupt in 1996. It had been the subject of many suits from the church. (The CAN site was promptly snapped up by a Scientologist, and it now links to pieces sympathetic to the church -- and disparaging to its critics.) The church maintains that reporters who truly made efforts to learn about Scientology have never been a problem. "Where reporters have taken the time to understand the Church and really get their questions answered, the public have been presented with an accurate view of Scientology," Parkin said in a statement to Salon about press coverage. "Where reporters have not taken the trouble to understand who we are and what we are about, the public has been presented with an inaccurate view of Scientology. When this happens, it does the public a disservice."

In recent years, however, the type of coverage the church has faced is decidedly different from the investigative reports of the early 1990s. Stories still refer skeptically to Scientology, but most of the coverage focuses primarily on celebrity members such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Any negative stories are usually limited to a specific church program under mild scrutiny, or to fans' concerns that a celebrity, such as Cruise fiancée Katie Holmes, has unwittingly joined the flock. "My sense in general is that America increasingly blends entertainment with news, to the neglect of important news items involving Scientology, " says Stephen Kent, a professor at the University of Alberta, who has written extensively on Scientology. But what caused this shift to more lightweight coverage? "The church has changed the way it conducts business," Sappell says. "They are trying to be much more mainstream."

Kent agrees, adding, "It may not want to continue its aggressive court action, [in order] to maintain its image as a [mainstream] religion." Parkin maintains the church was no less open to the press in the past. "We have always been willing to work with the press to help them understand us," Parkin responded when asked if the church had taken a different tone with reporters. "As the Church expands in the United States and around the globe, there is an increased interest in finding out about us. And we are responding to that interest." But, he adds, "We have always tried to resolve disputes short of litigation. That was not always possible in earlier years when we were forced to go to court to defend our rights and the rights of our parishioners to freely practice their religion. But as we have won more and more victories, we have had to resort to the courts much less. Nowadays it is a very rare occurrence."

For many reporters who have written recently about Scientology, cooperation couldn't be better. "They are very media friendly and there is nothing you can't ask them," says Ken Baker, West Coast executive editor for US Weekly. Benjamin Svetkey, who recently interviewed Tom Cruise for Entertainment Weekly and who has interviewed Travolta in the past about Scientology, agreed. "I have never had a problem," he said, adding that both men have been glad to speak about the church. "Nobody [from Scientology] has told me not to ask them about it. Nobody has been anything but friendly about it." He goes on to say, "It's kind of bizarre in some ways how they have been villainized."

And Nanette Asimov of the San Francisco Chronicle found similar cooperation when she did report critically on the church's Narconon program, a drug treatment effort that drew scrutiny when it was incorporated into San Francisco's public schools. Because of the attention brought by Asimov's series, the city banned the Scientology program from its schools; several other school districts in the state, including Los Angeles, followed. Nonetheless, Asimov says, "I found that they were always accessible and polite for the most part," adding, "and eager to answer questions. Hostility wasn't part of it."

At the same time, she described church officials as "unlike anyone else I have ever interviewed" while reporting her stories. "I got more phone calls from them prior to publication than I have from anyone. 'Nervous' doesn't begin to describe how they were." (In preparing this series, Salon writers and editors have fielded frequent calls -- and one office visit -- from church officials.)

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