And the reporters were intrigued if
for no other reason than this, trying to find out what it was all
about. So it was covered in the media to the saturation point. Major
publications, journals, newspapers, magazines, at what was obviously
considerable expense, assigned full-time reporters to stay in
Rome for three whole years pursuing this "story." It was to them
obviously that important.

There were journalists in this process who were more than
journalists and who consciously saw themselves as not just reporting
what was going on but also attempting to affect what was going on. In
the United States probably the single most important set of articles,
later books, in terms of forming people's impression of the Council,
was a series that appeared in The New Yorker magazine called,
Letter from Vatican City. For years The New Yorker had
regularlyrun Letter from London, Letter from Paris, etc. So now
they ran Letter from Vatican City, under the name of a man
called Xavier Rynne. Xavier Rynne later was confirmed to be an American
priest in Rome named Francis X. Murphy. These Letters from Vatican
City purported to be an insider's account of what was happening at
the Council -- very detailed, eventually three volumes, three books. In
a way they were an insider's account. Father Murphy knew a lot about
what was going on. He had good sources, he had access, he knew bishops,
he knew cardinals, he knew Vatican officials, he knew lots of people.
But it was also an attempt to shape the public impression of the
Council in a particular way, and in that sense I don't think that it
was balanced and perhaps not