BBC Panorama Reporter John Sweeny Explodes
tags:
Stumble ThisJohn Sweeny losing his temper and screaming with rage during the making of an investigation into the Church of Scientology.
Sweeney lost his temper while visiting the Church of Scientology's exhibition, 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death', which uses graphic images to attack psychiatry. Sweeney said that, having dogged him for six days, Davis accused him of giving an easy ride to one of his interviewees, a critic of Scientology, even though he had not heard the full interview.
It was then that Sweeney, his face contorted with anger and his finger jabbing, began yelling at the top of his voice: 'You were not there at the beginning of the interview! You were not there! You did not hear or record all the interview!'
Sweeney lost his temper while visiting the Church of Scientology's exhibition, 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death', which uses graphic images to attack psychiatry. Sweeney said that, having dogged him for six days, Davis accused him of giving an easy ride to one of his interviewees, a critic of Scientology, even though he had not heard the full interview.
It was then that Sweeney, his face contorted with anger and his finger jabbing, began yelling at the top of his voice: 'You were not there at the beginning of the interview! You were not there! You did not hear or record all the interview!'
you should throw that link in the description
At this day and age it really makes me think how so many people don't want to look at the facts.
His resulting outburst and overly ignorant manner cut his insider access short and resulted in an unsatisfying dive into the cult that barely presented anything at all.
If a more 'hardened' journalist was in his place I think we could've got a better documentary.
I have an ambivalent attitude to this Scientology stuff - I consider all religion to be a cult, it is just that some have the weight of thousands of years (and millions of lives) behind them forcing certain beliefs and attidutes on those in their thrall.
I also feel that societies are similarly 'cult based', and people have no choice in where they are born or how they are brought up, just in their preferences and groups they join later. It makes this battle between the BBC and the Scientologists a kind of a clash of culture as well, between who can utilise the media better.
Similarly the shouting fit thrown by John Sweeny and the intimidation techniques used by Tommy Davis are the kind of nasty nose-to-nose confrontations that occur between people every day of the week on the street, in bars, in offices etc.
However, having said all that, watching the Panorama programme showed Scientology to be extremely creepy. I have nothing against people, much less Hollywood stars, giving all their money away to a cult if they want to, and even have some sympathy with the Scientologists getting upset at being investigated but listening in and then interrupting interviews with people with dissenting opinions by walking up to an interview in progress and relating the interviewees faults and criminal convictions in lurid detail is incredibly rude and insulting as well as creepy.
They just seem to be incredibly insecure - if you have to follow people around and confront them if you see them speaking to 'undesireable' people then you must be worried about what they will say and perhaps even have something to hide that you might be worried about them talking about.
Surely the best way is to let people with dissenting opinions talk - even if they have a good point there is a good chance a lot of people will still sympathise with the Scientologists! The confrontation however just makes the Scientologist look weirder for acting up, and Davis immediately lost any sympathy from me when I saw him get upset at Sweeny just trying to conduct an interview. It is also interesting to see from the Panorama programme that Sweeny shouts at Tommy Davis after Davis has already tried to shout him down (and we have been shown two other incidences of Davis shouting Sweeny down and Sweeny backing off and letting him have his say previous to this)
I'll be very interested to see whether Anne Archer, Juliette Lewis "and the rest" who were interviewed for the Scientology cause but then withdrew their comments have any influence in preventing the BBC from showing their films or programmes etc or whether they will still turn up on the BBC in the future - i.e. whether their 'beliefs' are stronger than the almighty dollar.
I'm also surprised the BBC didn't have a little ticker at the bottom of the screen ticking off the number of times they used the word 'cult' in the programme! That would have lightened the tone while still pissing the Scientologists off! I counted around 14 uses of the word (15 if you count that one that described Tommy Davis, but I might have heard a 'l' instead of an 'n'!)