Heaven’s Gate: The Dawning of a New Religious Movement

When the lives of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate movement came to a dramatic end through a mass suicide in March of 1997, what followed in the mass media can be likened to a sort of “feeding frenzy.” Sabato (1991) defines a “feeding frenzy” as “the press coverage attending any political event or circumstance where a critical mass of journalists leap to cover the same embarrassing or scandalous subject and pursue it intensely, often excessively, and sometimes uncontrollably” (Sabato, 1991, 6).