A total of eight journalists will be allowed to
attend Paolo Gabriele’s hearings; some will have fixed positions and
others will be rotated. Fixed journalists will be representing
Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse. A fourth post has
been conceded to an Italian news agency.
Agenzia Italia’s Vatican correspondent, Salvatore Izzo, has rightly criticised the method used to choose the individuals in the pool of journalists who will attend Paolo Gabriele’s trial, on Blog degli Amici di Papa Ratzinger (Friends of Pope Ratzinger blog). The trial begins next Saturday.
A quick foreword: We cannot see why a trial involving the most important person in the lives of one million and two hundred million Catholics cannot be broadcast in a closed-circuit television transmission from the Holy See Press Office. But the Vatican’s reserve which is shared with some American states - if we are not mistaken - and the UK are humanly understandable.
What is less easy to under stand is this: The majority of the world’s Catholics are Spanish speakers. Even in the U.S. the Catholic Church is looking increasingly “Latino”. So how can you not give a fixed post to a Spanish language news agency or media channel when it is the tongue that is most widely spoken by Catholic faithful across the world? Especially when the nugget of gold and the cheque which the Pope’s former butler stole, had been intended as a gift from the Pope to Hispanic charities.
If assigning an additional fixed post is a problem because it means less space for rotating journalists, then one solution could be to alternate the two English language agencies. It is true that having a pool of journalists means colleagues that form part of it would have to tell everyone else what they saw, heard and felt. But we know from extensive experience that even in the best case scenario and no matter how much goodwill there is, this never happens. Whoever is there is person never spills all the beans.
Since in this case it would be about giving Catholics an informative, balanced and unbiased account (which some of the chosen agencies have failed to do in the recent past) of a trial which concerns the Pope and his household, we believe it is only normal that linguistic criteria should be taken into consideration. Without discriminating between Catholics and non-Catholics.
There are Spanish language Catholic media that could very well perform this task. And it would be very strange if they were not chosen on the basis of being Catholic.