Scientologists' Deal With IRS: $12.5 Million

Scientologists' Deal With IRS, $12.5 Million, published by The Seattle Times on 31 December 1997, is contemporary journalism reporting on the terms of the Church of Scientology's October 1993 closing agreement with the US Internal Revenue Service, under which the IRS granted the church tax exempt status. Its strength is that it is reporting from a mainstream daily newspaper published close to the events it describes, part of the substantial contemporaneous press record documenting the settlement. Its limit is that as a single newspaper article it reports one outlet's account of a settlement whose full terms were themselves initially confidential and became a subject of ongoing controversy and later investigative reporting, so a claim about the settlement's precise terms or the negotiations behind it should be checked against the fuller record rather than this one 1997 report alone.