Reception

The Rajneesh movement did not have a nice upbringing in the media, as most media portrayals of this commune are negative. They mostly had sex-related problems. But some examples of positive media portrayal would be that a lot of celebrities allegedly supported this commune, which did some good to them. Although this is not very typical sort of media, we know that the talks that happened in this commune were made into video cassettes, which leads to income for them as well as publicity. What could have made the reputation of the leader go down is that he criticized politicians constantly, the renowned ones from India.
Like I said before, the media was very interested in anything sex-related within the communes. There were people saying that he was marrying minors and therefore having sexual intercourse with them. After all of those claims about sex-related issues, this commune was also attacked with claims of terrorism as well as immigration issues. As the commune started to fall, some members were charged according to those claims, which made the fall come quicker as their leader was made to leave the United States.
The Rajneesh movement also had some troubles ever since they stepped into Oregon, where they were not welcomed. The people living there did not want this commune to come invade them as they saw them as a "cult". Of course, after everything that had happened with "cults", they did not want a terror in their backyard. And so, the media was not kind to this commune as they stood by the Oregon residents. It was alleged that the members poisoned the salad bars with salmonella that got people sick, but not killed. After this incident, this commune was even more subjected to negative media as it was described as a bioterror attack.

See article here
See article here

Claire Maurel

Comments

  1. Lesley MoralesNovember 12, 2017 at 5:01 PM

    Great post! I really enjoyed how you touched on not only the negatives but the positives as well. I did not know that some celebrities supported this commune which is pretty cool to know. This commune got a lot of negative attention especially after the salad bar poisoning incident. Good info!

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  2. UnknownDecember 14, 2017 at 10:31 AM

    Great blog! Like Lesley said, it was great that you focused on the two sides of media portrayals that surrounded the Rajneesh Movement. I also think it's interesting that there was so much controversy around the sexual side of the movement, when there was so much more going on than that. Although having intercourse with a minor is a serious offense, it is interesting to me that that is the only thing the media would focus on.

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