Research Methods

I began my research by delving into my family's books, personal letters, clippings of newspaper stories and other primary and secondary documents that related to the Peoples Temple. I originally planned to compare the media coverage of the Peoples Temple before and after it relocated to Jonestown, Guyana, but realized there was little media coverage until the New West exposé.

Marshall Kilduff's exposé became the central primary document in my research.

I read numerous primary document articles that ran after the mass murder-suicide in late 1978. Many of them acknowledge that the media was manipulated by Jones and question what the media could have done differently. I also read analysis pieces, some of which were written more than five years after Jonestown.

My secondary sources include a book written by a church defector, Deborah Layton, who wrote an affidavit after fleeing Jonestown and recounts her experiences in a haunting memoir filled with details of the Temple's history. I also read "Raven" by Tim Reiterman, the San Francisco Chronicle journalist who was shot down with the Ryan delegation.

The New West exposé from the summer of 1977 and Tim Reiterman's "Raven" provided the best material for my analysis of the Peoples Temple media coverage.

I interviewed my dad–– who has extensive knowledge about the cult and followed the news he could get about Jonestown religiously. I also interviewed Tim Reiterman about his retrospective ideas about the Peoples Temple media coverage and his book. Another interesting communication history aspect I spoke with my interviewees about was why the Jonestown tragedy got so much media coverage but doesn't show up in textbooks.

I was fascinated to contrast Sharon's letters to her parents that raved about Jonestown with defector's accounts of abuse within the Temple.

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As former Temple member Garry Scarff wrote of his initial Peoples Temple defection for a Cult Awareness Network News publication in 1987,

"The aides forced me out of the room and downstairs. I resisted to no avail. They took me to a room and shoved me on the floor and discussed how I should be punished.

They were enjoying this. One of them produced a gun and taunted me with it, pointing it at me and clicking the trigger. I was scared and crying. They were laughing and calling me names. They decided to 'box me.'

One of the aides started punching me with his fists. The aide with the gun told me that after they were through, they were going to shoot me in the crotch to cure me of my homosexuality. They were really laughing now."

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