The US National Council Of Churches represents over 45 million members. The NCC was represented in a delegation that went, in late February, to Iran and met with top Iranian religious and political leaders, in hopes of increasing trust and reducing tensions that might lead to war between the US and Iran. On Monday February 26th the delegation gave a Washington press conference about the trip. Beyond a vitriolic New York Post parody of the delegation Not a single major US media venue has opted to cover the story.
Pro Nuclear War Lobbying Group Gets More Media !
Meanwhile, the NYT - which declined to cover the peace efforts - opted to run a February 7th op-ed. that appears to treat favorably a new Christian "pro-Israel" lobbying group that advocates for a US nuclear attack on Iran and whose founder says publicly that he thinks the war he wants to start (for religious reasons) will set in motion an apocalyptic global conflict that he thinks could kill most Jews on Earth. Also, top GOP leaders meet often with Mr. Hagee. I suppose they're just "pandering", eh ? Well, we sure better hope they are.
So, the New York Times has also just published a story about how the anti-war "Out of Iraq [US] Congressional Caucus" has been blacked out by the media, but the Times is itself blacking out the story of a peace delegation to Iran representing upwards of perhaps 60 million Americans or more. (see my interview with delegate member Jim Winkler)
[image, left, comes from the Sept-Oct. 2006 church magazine of CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee]
On February 22, I interviewed, pre-trip, top United Methodist Church leader Jim Winkler, one of the religious leaders of the peace delegation to Iran. The delegation, including the National Council Of Churches, represented probably more than 50 million American Christians. Possibly 60 million, maybe more than that. By contrast, the Southern Baptist Convention represents about 20 million.
In my interview with Jim Winkler, Winkler basically said John McCain had lost his senses for courting Pastor John Hagee's new "Christians United For Israel" lobby that's pushing for a US nuclear attack on Iran. On CUFI Winkler said : "I don't even know how they can be referred to even as Christian any longer to be honest with you. It's..... It ought to be put in quotes because they've veered so far off from the teachings of Jesus Christ as to be virtually unrecognizable in terms of historical Christianity"
On Monday Feb. 26th the Peace Delegation to Iran had returned and held a Washington DC press conference.
National media appears to have blacked out the story -
A Google search reveals virtually no major US media covered the story. The New York Post was the only big paper. It's headline : "Americans Bow Down To Anti-US Ayatollahs
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq , US media also blacked out the peace efforts of the National Council of Churches and other groups.
From my interview : "Winkler told me of how the US media had virtually ignored an earlier peace effort, which he and [ Bob ] Edgar were active in, to prevent the US war with Iraq, and thinks that media blackout will become known as "one of the most shameful episodes in American media history". Prior to the US invasion of Iraq Winkler said he "regularly met with journalists from England, France, Germany, Brazil, Denmark" who informed him "This is actually news in our country to learn that there are American Christians who support peace." "
The New York Times needs to do better - it's black involvment in helping the Bush Administration's push for the invasion of Iraq will long stain the Times' reputation.
As Howard Friel and Richard Falk amply document, in their book The Record of The Paper : How The New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy
When the New York Times finally apologized for its coverage of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in 2004, it was too late. The newspaper had already supported the invasion. The Bush administration was not only violating international law, it was lying to the public, using major media like the Times to spread its message.
In this meticulously researched study—the first part of a two-volume work—Howard Friel and Richard Falk demonstrate how the newspaper of record in the United States has consistently, over the last 50 years, misreported the facts related to the wars waged by the United States. From Vietnam in the 1960s to Nicaragua in the 1980s and Iraq today, the authors accuse the New York Times of serial distortions. They claim that such coverage now threatens not only world legal order but constitutional democracy in the United States.
Falk and Friel show, for example, that, despite numerous US threats to invade Iraq, and despite the fact that an invasion of one country by another implicates fundamental aspects of the UN Charter and international law, the New York Times editorial page never mentioned the words "UN Charter" or "international law" in any of its 70 editorials on Iraq from September 11, 2001, to March 20, 2003. The authors also show that the editorial page supported the Bush administration’s WMD claims against Iraq, and that its magazine, op-ed and news pages performed just as poorly.