Newshounds Pay, Pray for Line of Sight on Holy See

The Roman media circus has begun.

No one has been trampled by horses yet, but try to stay clear of the legions of journalists storming the Eternal City: a horde of frantic, overworked, sleep-deprived “pilgrims” immersed in a feeding frenzy of historic proportions.

It has been years in the making. When the health of Pope John Paul II declined in the mid-1990s, major television networks began angling for roofs and terraces with commanding views of the Vatican. They paid astronomical sums for their beachheads to cover the pope’s death and the selection of his successor.

John Paul’s stamina made them wait quite a bit longer than they expected. But today, a temporary tele-village has superimposed itself on the sumptuous skyline. Sprouting among Renaissance cupolas and stone angels, the satellite dishes, multicolored tents and steel-framed camera platforms are testaments to the kind of savage capitalism against which the pope often preached.

“It’s a gold rush,” chuckled John Arden, a veteran Australian journalist and the owner of Tiger Red Ltd. The company provides satellite equipment and space to broadcasters and occupies a choice camera position atop a genteel, five-story building near St. Peter’s Square.

Showing keen foresight, Arden moved his offices into the building because of its location five years ago. On Monday, as a camera crew from Sky Television prepared for a live report on the sun-splashed roof, Arden surveyed the panorama of high-priced outposts before him.

Half a block to his right was the encampment of NBC and other heavyweights on a hill offering a prize vantage point that takes in the basilica, the square, the papal apartments and the chimney above the Sistine Chapel that will puff white smoke when a new pope is elected.

The networks avoid talking about the money they have paid to preserve their spots, which only stokes speculation about prices in the freewheeling Italian media and among landlords intoxicated by images of desperate, deep-pocketed foreigners. Newspapers have suggested that the going rate to hold a position on an upscale roof in recent years was $40,000 a month.

That’s too high, knowledgeable broadcasters say. But they throw around hefty numbers nonetheless.

Arden estimated that property owners are charging between $50,000 and $300,000 during coverage of this month’s activities. That’s on top of monthly holding fees of $2,000 to $3,000 plus down payments when they arrived. A television producer for a European company said that several years ago the owners of a prime building asked him to pay $200,000 for the peak coverage period.

Stories abound of shark-like tactics, cutthroat negotiations and ugly spats between tenants and landlords and among competing outlets.

“There have been terrible fights over the buildings, lawsuits, bidding frenzies,” said Arden, a cheerful raconteur and well-traveled newsman. The turf wars remind him of an anecdote about feuding Greek villagers who kept building taller towers to have superior firing positions during gunfights.

“That’s what this is,” he said, referring to the rooftop bases and the multistory broadcast platforms that have mushroomed on the streets and even inside St. Peter’s Square. “The networks build platforms so their gods, the correspondents, aren’t bothered by the populace. Other networks build towers higher to see over them. And everyone is making money: the drivers, the sandwich vendors, the electric company, the telephone company.”

The entrepreneurial onslaught has hit full stride because everyone knows it will last only a matter of weeks.

The area is overflowing with journalists from all over the world. Satellite trucks prowl for a place to set up. Camera crews hustle for man-on-the-street, or better, priest-on-the-street, interviews. Newspaper scribes hunt for scarce commodities such as talkative cardinals, vacant hotel rooms and press credentials, which Monday required four-hour waits at the Vatican media center.

But Rome retains its splendor, the sun shines in a blue sky and the story couldn’t be bigger.

“Look at this place,” said Julian Zamora, a cameraman for Telemundo network, admiring the Bernini colonnade in St. Peter’s Square from a broadcast platform on the hill. “You find tremendous images without even looking for them. It’s Rome -- everything is beautiful.”

Zamora is based in Miami for Telemundo, a Spanish-language network affiliated with NBC. Last week, he was shooting a color feature about barbecues when the word came: The pope is dying. Go to Rome. Now.

“We washed the garlic from the barbecue off our hands, packed up fast and caught a plane to New York,” Zamora recalled in Cuban-accented Spanish. “In New York we took a charter plane, 150 of us. We got to Rome five hours before the pope died and started shooting right away.”

Zamora has endured a whirl of nonstop days and sleepless nights driven by the demand for constant coverage and the time-zone difference. He finds Romans easygoing but a bit overwhelmed by the media swarm.

“I think maybe because they had the pope so close, they lost perspective on how powerful a force he was for people from other places,” he said. “They weren’t ready for the size of the response. The drivers, the people at the hotels, they aren’t ready for us Americans: how hard we work, the fact we need to get things done now. It’s kind of funny to watch.”

During 13 years at Telemundo, Zamora has covered war in Iraq and Afghanistan and earthquakes and hurricanes in Central America. The pope story lacked violent adrenalin, but he said it remained special for him as a Catholic whose company has a devout, Spanish-speaking audience in the United States and Latin America. He remembers covering a visit by John Paul to Mexico and watching in awe as people fainted from emotion.

Although the media spectacular here has a seedy, unruly side, the moment combines history and spirituality in a unique way, he said.

“As a story, I think it’s the one among all the others I’ve done that will last the longest as a historic thing,” he said. “The most transcendental. And just look at this view.”

Times staff writer Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.