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# Scientology’s PR campaign
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/scientologys-pr-campaign/
- Published: 2008-03-25T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T18:56:59.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Community, Downtown, #archive-import

*Combatting critics, church creates new TV channel online*

*By JON HABER Special to the Daily Press*

DOWNTOWN In the midst of recent protests surrounding the Church of Scientology’s decision to force YouTube to remove a video of Tom Cruise praising the controversial religion, the Santa Monica Scientology center is inviting everyone to drop in and watch the church’s new video channel.

The video channel, which scientol-ogists say allows people to capture the true essence of the church’s philosophy, consists of 82 different videos, adding up to almost three hours of content. It was launched earlier this month on the group’s official Web site, www.scientology.com.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” said Vicky Walker, scientol-ogist at the Santa Monica Mission. “We want to give people an opportunity to get information directly from the church on the Internet.”

According to the church’s Web site, “Scientology is about the individual man or woman. Its goal is to bring an individual to a sufficient understanding of himself and his life and free him to improve conditions in the way that he sees fit.”

The videos further explain these beliefs and define the concepts of “thetan” and “the eight dynamics.” Scientologists feel these new videos can offer a philosophical overview to people who want to know more.

The Santa Monica Mission is offering a viewing of the video channel every day from 1 p.m. — 6 p.m.

Scientologist Gene Dell said the church made the videos available on its official Web site to save people the trouble of going through search engines.

“It makes it easy. It’s just something people are really interested in,”Dell said.“We’ve had these videos in different formats for a long time. This just puts them all together.”

The video launch comes at a time when the Church of Scientology is coming under fire by critics who claim the church exploits its members and suppresses free speech.

According to www.news.com, Anonymous, a group of Internet users who post on message boards under unidentified names, declared war against Scientology in January after the church tried to remove clips of Cruise speaking about the philosophy. Some have referred to Scientology as a cult.

Despite the attacks, Dell said the video launch was not a response to Anonymous’ or others’ criticisms. “(Anonymous) has had very little effect on our productivity, and the important thing we’re doing with Anonymous is making sure they don’t disrupt our daily and weekly religious activity,”Dell said.“I haven’t been told \[the video launch\] was put up into response with that.”

Dell tried to look at the attacks as a positive. “All of this has shown us one thing,” she said. “People are very interested in what we are doing.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 25, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/032508.pdf?ref=smdp.com)