Press: The Pope's Been Shot!

The lesson learned from the Reagan shooting: caution

"The Pope has apparently been shot. We don't know what his condition is. It was just at the beginning of the general audience in St. Peter's Square ... The Pope was seen to waver, to fall back into the arms of his secretary after four, or five, or six shots were fired."

Broadcast over some 1,700 ABC radio stations at 11:30:24 a.m. (E.D.T.) last Wednesday, that first word in the U.S. of the assassination attempt struck like a hammer. Once again, routines of everyday life were ruptured as millions of U.S. radio listeners, and an estimated 400 million TV viewers around the world, strained for further news from Rome. In the minutes that followed the first bulletin, CBS-TV, then ABC and NBC interrupted soap operas and game shows with special reports that echoed painfully in the memory. Journalists were dismayed by the similarity with the shooting of President Reagan just six weeks earlier. Said ABC-TV Anchorman Ted Koppel: "We have all too much experience with this kind of story."

News of the attack dominated front pages from Boston to Bangkok. JEAN PAUL II: THE WORLD APPALLED read the 1½-in. headline in Paris' daily Le Figaro. In Johannesburg, an afternoon Star editorial bemoaned the violence "that seems to pervade the whole world." The New York Times devoted its first seven pages to the story and upped its pressrun by 180,000, to 1.16 million. The Los Angeles Times hit the streets two hours earlier than usual with a rare extra edition; the Washington Star printed two extra editions within hours of the shooting. In Vatican City, staffers at L'Osservatore Romano, the church daily, worked through the night to turn out the first early-morning extra edition in its 120-year history. The headline: HOURS OF HOPE AND PRAYER FOR THE HEALTH OF THE HOLY FATHER.

In Warsaw, John Paul's countrymen first heard a mournful radio report that began, "We have sad news for you." In the hours that followed, as they gathered on street corners and prayed for the Pope's survival, Poland's state-controlled radio and television stations carried an unprecedented torrent of live news reports fed by satellite from the West.

ABC's Washington-based Anchorman Frank Reynolds was in Manhattan to attend his son's graduation from the Columbia School of Journalism. He heard the news as he arrived at the Park Lane Hotel: "A total stranger ran up to me and said, 'Don't get out of the car! Go to work! The Pope's been shot!' " CBS Anchorman Dan Rather was attending a breakfast meeting with network affiliates in Los Angeles when Senior Executive Producer Burton Benjamin tapped him on the shoulder. Rather raced to the nearby CBS bureau, where a satellite link with New York was hastily arranged so that he could anchor the day's reporting from Los Angeles. NBC'S John Chancellor delivered a series of news bulletins throughout the day from his New York anchor desk.