Reporter John Sweeney’s Infamous Meltdown Explained by Mike Rinder
After reporter John Sweeney’s infamous meltdown toward a Church of Scientology spokesman, Mike Rinder—speaking at the time for the Church—explains how Sweeney had his tantrum after being confronted on his bias and unwillingness to inspect the facts.
TRANSCRIPT:
JOHN SWEENEY: NO, TOMMY, YOU STOP NOW! NO, LISTEN TO ME! YOU WERE NOT THERE AT THE BEGINNING OF THAT INTERVIEW! YOU WERE NOT…
MIKE RINDER: We’re not the first people that have experienced the exploding tomato. This is something that has been going on for some time. I’m sure that there are others who have had similar experiences and now we are able to show what really happened. We documented everything that occurred, everything that occurred with John Sweeney.
First of all, we offered very broad, open access to John Sweeney and [BBC] Panorama . He refused it. He refused to come into our churches. He refused our offers to accept broad access. We wanted to show him everything about the Church. It messed up his story.
He showed up at our spiritual headquarters in Clearwater where we have two million square feet of buildings, 40 buildings, 10,000 Scientologists, and he didn’t go into one of the buildings. He didn’t speak to one of the Scientologists there. At that point, we knew that there was something wrong, that there was something that was astray with the way that John Sweeney was approaching doing the story.
