0: [Pat Robertson (“PR”): We’ll be back with one of the most famous feature writers of The New York Times. He’s not with the Times right now, but he was a distinguished journalist, reporter and writer of features, many, many headlines, front-page features, for The New York Times a few years back, and we’ll be introducing McCandlish Phillips (“JP”) right after this message; stay tuned. (pause)

[PR: One of the most influential newspapers in the world is The New York Times and with us today on the 700 Club is a man who was one of the Times finest reporters—would you please welcome McCandlish Phillips? (applause)

[PR: Great to see you there! You left the Times two years ago, why was this—was it not what you had hoped? Did the Lord give you something else to do?]

1: JP: Pat, the Lord gave me, I think, a new stage for the media in vision and I left the Times to get off the daily deadline wheel to go beyond to the next step basically.

[PR: Okay. You started as a cub reporter and… Were you a Christian when you went to work for the Times? Or did you become a Christian later?]

JP: No, I was a Christian: I was a Christian from 1950 and I went to work for the Times in 1952 and the Lord led me there specifically.

[PR: Oh, as a cub reporter, I understand God gave you insights, scoops… somehow two people would be covering the story and your story would wind up on the… your version of it would be on the front page.]

JP: Pat, if I may say this this way: Jesus is the greatest reporter in the world. He knew that there was a coin in the mouth of a fish swimming in the ocean… [PR: All right.] and He sent His disciples to get it. And He knows where the scoops are, and if a reporter will follow the Lord, he’ll get advantages.

Pat, there was a day when…. The editors don’t give reporters very much notice; sometimes they can’t, but sometimes they just don’t. And it was 5:30 and an editor called me up and said, “School’s out tomorrow in New York City; cover it.” Well, there are 900 public schools in New York City, it’s a very big place and there are hundreds of thousands of students; how do you cover that? So I prayed.

2: And the Lord said to me very clearly, “Go to the Bronx.” Now, the Bronx is a pretty big place too. But I got on the subway the next morning early and I went to the Bronx, I didn’t know where I was going. And I felt to get off at a certain station, so I got off. I didn’t know where the schools were even, I didn’t have a list of the schools. When I got… I went upstairs and I asked someone, “Where is the nearest public school?”

And they said, “A block over here and a block over there.” And I went there, and I began to inquire and I was told that two 65-year-old Jewish lady teachers, twins, were retiring that day, and they were real characters. (PR: They teach.) And I got the interview with them and I got photographers up there. Well, I didn’t know what school to go to of all the schools, but the Lord knew what was going on there that day. And they always said, “Well, how does Phillips always come back with these wonderful stories?” In the Lord. (applause)

3: [PR: Bravo! (laughter) I understand you used to put a Bible… God led you to put a Bible on your desk and when you left the Times, they said if that will help you that much, they ought to start a Gideon society in the Times, is that right?]

JP: Yes, the managing editor who said that, they used to ask him, “Well, does it make a reporter unobjective to believe in the Bible?” And he wrote this answer in a book, he said, “As far as the Times editors could see, if having a Bible on his desk had been of any help to McCandlish Phillips, the Times should form a Gideon society of its own to give Bibles to all their reporters.”

[PR: (laughing) Well, you know, we get a perspective of the Times, the Washington Post and some of these as being “ultra-liberal” and kind of against religion and this, that and the other—is that a true picture or is it a caricature of them?]

4: JP: Pat, the… I think you could say the state of the nation that we live in is a reflection in some significant part of the condition of the media. (PR: Um-hmm.) And the condition of the media is a reflection of the people who work in them. (PR: Okay.) And when I went to work for the Times, it took me about six months, but I realized there was not one other born-again believer of 275 reporters and editors working in that vast news department—not one other. Well, where were the Christians? (PR: Yeah.) I was the first, possibly the first in 40 years.

[PR: You were the first born-again Christian, you think, in 40 years of reporters and editors as the key people? (JP: As far as anyone knows.) Well, that means there’s either got to be a lack of understanding about Christianity or possibly a suspicion or a hostility or all three in those people.]

5: JP: No, I think we did it to ourselves. (PR: Did we?) You see, those doors are wide open to believers. (PR: Uh-huh.) They never ask you, “What do you believe?” You can be a leftist or a rightist or a centrist, you can be a Christian or an atheist. They ask you, “What can you do? Can you go get the news? Can you bring it on deadline? Can you write—fast?” That’s the test. (PR: Um-hmm.) And there’s been an exclusion of believers from the media, but it’s a self-exclusion: we’ve done this to ourselves.

[PR: Why? Why have Christians withdrawn from this key thing?]

JP: Well, you tell me: why have they? (PR: All right. The Communists wouldn’t withdraw, would they?) The Communists targeted the media in New York City in the 1930’s and made a rather good penetration for a while before the unions went after them. (PR: Oh, the unions went after the Communists?) They thought that having a Marxist element there would be destroying to union interests. (PR: Okay.) So they put some spotlight on those people and rather flushed them out.

6: [PR: Well, this is incredible, though, that you know as Christian surveys have been made, they say 80% or something of the key media people don’t go to church, they’ve got no religious beliefs; many of them are liberal if not leftist in their orientation politically and you go down the line and they always support Democratic candidates versus Republican, etc. But does this reflect in their writing—it’s bound to? I mean, this bias is going to color what they say, isn’t it?]

JP: Pat, news is a totally human product, both in what it reports and how it’s reported. And it has to bear some of the flavor of the persons who handle it necessarily.

[PR: Okay, well, Christians—is there access now, you think? I’m feeling that we could do this. Should Christians start their own newspapers? We have our own television network, in a sense, this is under the hands of CBN. Should we start newspapers or press services, an alternate to AP, UPI, or should we try to have people working in them or should there be both?]

JP: Pat, I don’t think we should try to start new newspapers now, I believe it would be too costly. (PR: Okay.) But I believe we should start buying existing successful newspapers and begin to bring the Christian emphasis in due measure into them.

You know, the media tend to ignore… not all Christian activity, they recognize Billy Graham because he draws big crowds, that’s the main thing. But if Billy Graham drew small crowds and was the same man with the same message, they wouldn’t recognize his message. (PR: That’s true.) It’s the crowds that he draws that makes him a media figure really. But the media tend to exclude Christian reality and Christian activities from much of their reporting. And we would just begin to bring that into the stream of the news in the right amount.

8: [PR: Well, this is what I have found: I mean, they just don’t think that prayer is all that significant, that God works, that He speaks to people today. They just don’t believe that. (JP: That’s right.) So that isn’t part their frame of reference or their reality. (JP: Not at all.)

[PR: All right, now, we have a communications school at CBN University where we’re training television people particularly—should there be journalism schools? You’ve got to train these people, don’t you? Or do they exist now, these Christian journalists, are there enough of them to do anything?]

JP: Well, Pat, there are now a half a dozen or more Christian journalism schools. Many of them produce students who go out into the Christian media (PR: What do you know?) to serve our own people, so to speak. Some are now beginning to train some to go out into the secular media. I would say we need hundreds of believers in the secular media.

[PR: But if they don’t exist, they’ve got to be created. I mean, there’s something that’s got to be done. I mean, who would you… If you were going to pick the ideal reporter… Now, David Aikman was the one first to show…David has a PhD, an MA, went to Oxford, etc., and now he’s Time’s man in Peking. Uh, what would you want if you want to say, “This is the man I’d like to have for my writer or my journalist”? (JP: The kind of person?) Yes, the training, the aptitude, etc.]

JP: You need a person who’s very quick on their feet, you have to turn on a dime. News does not keep hours. (PR: Um-hmm.) And when news breaks, it has to be pursued right as it’s breaking. There has to be a quickness of mind; there has to be, I think, an objectivity to be as fair as you can in looking at everything—be as fair to even the people you don’t trust entirely as you can be in reporting on them.

[PR: Well, in terms of educational background, is there any particular kind of discipline the good reporter or writer should have had before he gets into the newspapering? (JP: Are you about to found a journalism school?) Yes (laughs), as a matter of fact, I think it’s one of the top priorities in my particular agenda right now, I think it’s one of the most important things that could be done, a really top-notch journalism school.]

JP: I agree, I just thank God for that fact; I hope you’ll send hundreds of believers into the regular media.

[PR: Well, if you want to get candidates for journalism school, let us say, what should… I mean, should they have studied philosophy, should they have studied political science, should they have studied writing…does it matter? Liberal arts, business…what preparation prior to journalism should they have?]

JP: I think, Pat, a general rounded education (PR: Um-hmm) is the best thing, and then whatever specially they think they want to be moving into later also.

[PR: Well, how about in your case: what were you before you started with the Times? Had you been in journalism before then?]

11: JP: Uh, somewhat. I had been a department store salesman in Boston and I tried to start a New England professional basketball league at one point and I worked for a couple of weeklies in Boston for about a year and then the Army drafted me, just after I was converted. And the most significant turn of my life came late in my two years of Army service when I went to the small post chapel one morning early about 5 AM and I gave my life to the Lord. And He then led me the day of my release to New York City. I had no plan to go to New York City whatever; He led me there. And the next morning, He led me clearly to The New York Times and placed me in there as a reporter to begin to discover the situation as it is in the media.

[PR: Well, the Times is considered one of the great newspapers in the world. You just don’t walk in off the street from the PX and go to work as a reporter.]

JP: Pat, I had one thing on my Army uniform, I had my sergeant stripes on, I walked right in the door, the Lord led me in there. (PR: Incredible!) And they sort of resisted me, but I was irresistible that day.

[PR: (laughing) What, did you twist arms? I mean, did you just say, “I am going to be one of your reporters?”]

12: JP: No, I knew that I was to be hired that day in that place. (PR: Uh-huh.) You know what happened? (PR: What’s that?) They hired me. And do you know what next happened? (PR: What’s that?) They said, “Come to work”—I think it was a Tuesday night—“at 6 PM.” At four o’clock, I got so sick, that day, I had to go to bed. I had chills and fever and weakness. I had some kind of a virus on me and, I thought, I am supposed to work at the Times tonight for the first day at six o’clock and here I am flat on my back. And I had a thought: faith. (PR: Yeah.) Faith. So I got up and I had to hold onto the walls and the subway railing to get to that place.

Pat, that night by eight o’clock, every symptom of that illness left me and I felt well. (PR: Praise God!) And I realized in retrospect that was to stop me from going in there. (PR: That’s right. To stop you?) I believe it was in opposition, that attack (PR: Of Satan.) that brought chills was meant to stop me the first day. And if I hadn’t had the faith to get in there, it would have perhaps stopped me.

[PR: What was your first story? What did they give you to do?]

JP: My first byline was a rather odd one: they sent me out to Fifth Avenue to do the Christmas scene on Fifth Avenue and I think I remember the story began by saying, “There were enough Santa Clauses on Fifth Avenue yesterday to strain the credulity of even the most gullible five-year-old child.”

[PR: (laughing) And with that, you were launched in a great journalism career. One last thing: what do you do now—are you writing books or…? Well, you’ve written a couple of books.]

JP: I’ve written a couple. What I am doing mainly, Pat, is looking toward the future of Christians in the newspaper medium. And I believe that future is to own, publish and operate newspapers in this country. We’re free! (PR: Sure.) We can do this; the Russians can’t do it. (PR: That’s right.) And we’ve made our freedom the equivalent of their bondage, because they can’t do it and we don’t it. We’ve got to do it.

14: [PR: Well, I couldn’t, you know, say anything except a hearty “Amen.”]