As we've discussed often on this blog Tony Ortega has a truth-telling problem. Couple that with his wildly inaccurate portrayal of anything remotely related to Scientology and you have a 'perfect storm' of bad journalistic practice.
Tony Ortega's firm belief in his own unerring understanding may be the cause for this wrongheadedness in his obsession of Scientology.
His readers should beware of these problems and think critically about what he writes. He repeatedly whips up intolerance and cruelty on his blog commenting community, and keeps it going for as long as it benefits himself personally – no matter who gets harmed in the process.
Tony Ortega is informed, and fueled, by his own ideology which sees anyone promoting any kind of religion online as an enemy. The "get on the party bus" atmosphere of his blog would be almost comical if it weren't for its toxic agenda, which is to assume he, Ortega alone, knows the truth and will ridicule and tear down anyone else who has a different perspective.
Ortega often inserts his own biased views into his reporting, under his private rationalization that he is being a "reporting columnist" rather than an objective reporter on things in Scientology. He then pretends his coarse opinions and assertions are facts. And where is his evidence so we can see it? That's confidential. Yet Ortega continues to portray this fiction that he is an unbiased, objective journalist, reporting just the facts about Scientology. If you step back and look at his years of obsessive "reporting" on the subject of Scientology, it is clear that he is anything but objective and unbiased. Any information that ends up benefiting Scientology or paints Scientologists in a good light, Tony labels as "apologism".
The take-away here is that Tony Ortega does not make this clearly known to his readers, as you would see opinions only on the opinion page of a newspaper. This is bad journalistic practice and, sadly for Tony Ortega, this is par for the course.