Freedom (magazine)

Freedom is a magazine published by the Church of Scientology since 1968. The magazine describes its focus as "Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest." A frequent topic is psychiatry, which Scientology strongly opposes.

Content

A 19-part series in the magazine about the assassination of John F. Kennedy was made into the best-selling book JFK by L. Fletcher Prouty which Oliver Stone used as a source for his film JFK. In 1993, Scientologist John Carmichael was a contributing editor to Freedom.

In 1994, the magazine ran what it called an "expose" on what it described as a "history of prejudice" toward minority groups and women by the St. Petersburg Times, a newspaper which the Church of Scientology had some three months earlier accused of "inflammatory" coverage based on "lies and innuendo." It specifically mentioned the newspaper had a low percentage of African Americans in senior and management positions, and quotes one former employee of the paper who claimed that it had a glass ceiling for women. It finally also accused the editor of the Times, Andy Barnes, of a "striking lack of sensitivity" for some of his comments regarding the newspaper's efforts to actively recruit minorities. The St. Petersburg Times cited this behavior by the organization as evidence that "[t]he Church of Scientology still uses harassment and intimidation to fight its critics."