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. The founder of Christians United For Israel also blames the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism on Jews themselves, attributing the long history of persecution of Jews to the Israelites' worship of idols, which John Hagee believes caused God to put a divine curse on the Jewish people.  Top GOP leaders meet often with Mr. Hagee.

Although the New York Times has  published a story about how the anti-war "Out of Iraq [US] Congressional Caucus" has been blacked out by the media, the Times itself appears to be blacking out the story of a peace delegation to Iran representing upwards of perhaps 60 million Americans or more. (interview with peace delegation member )

This media blackout on peace efforts by moderate, mainstream Protestant Christian church denominations and also smaller Christian sectarian groups committed to peace can be viewed within the context of a decades-long effort by a nonprofit, secular Washington D.C. based organization called The Institute On Religion and Democracy, to undermine and break apart the mainstream Protestant Churches and so silence the Christian social justice tradition expressed in the recent Christian peace delegation to Iran. It would be difficult to prove widespread mainstream media complicity with the IRD, but whether intentionally or not US mainstream media has aided the IRD by neglecting to cover news related to mainstream church denomonations and groups that historically have been at the core of the American Christian tradition and which represent a substantial percentage of  American Christians.

[image, left, comes from the Sept-Oct. 2006 church magazine of CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee]

The Christian peace delegation to Iran represented, with the participation of the National Council Of Churches, probably more than 50 million American Christians.  By contrast, the pro-war Southern Baptist Convention, which supported the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, represents about 20 million Americans.

In a Frebruary 22nd, 2007 pre-trip interview with Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the United Methodist Church's General Board Of Church and Society, Winkler suggested US Senator John McCain had lost his senses by 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 the only major US news outlet that has covered the delegation, The New York Post, parodied the effort with the headline "Americans Bow Down To Anti-US Ayatollahs".

According to Winkler, prior to the US invasion of Iraq US media also blacked out the peace efforts of the National Council of Churches and other groups.

Winkler who, along with National Council Of Churhes head Rev. Bob Edgar, had worked to oppose the 2003 US war with Iraq, said the US media's failure to cover opposition to the impending US attack on Iraq, by church, and other, groups would in hios opinion come to be 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." "

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, the New York Times, long known as the leading American "newspaper of record", has a long history of misreporting US foreign policy news :

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.