Message from the National Council of Churches

Calling it a case of "journalistic malpractice," National Council of Churches General Secretary Bob Edgar Thursday challenged the content and conclusions of a U.S. News & World Report columnist who had suggested the Council's criticisms of the government of Israel were "anti-Semitic." Edgar, in a letter to the magazine's editor-in-chief Mortimer Zuckerman, pointed out that columnist John Leo, in the October 18 U.S. News edition now on newsstands, had wrongly attacked as biased criticism by four American Protestant churches and two ecumenical bodies (the NCC and World Council of Churches) of human rights actions by both Israeli and U.S. governments. Leo had obtained his information from a conservative political group, the Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD), but no one called the NCC -- nor, apparently, the other bodies' leaders -- to check the accuracy of the IRD's "findings," which Edgar called "grievously off the mark." Read more.

Read the US News & World Report's tirade

Related Post: Institute on Religion and Democracy: Just Another Right-Wing Group Working to Malign Christians Working For Peace and Justice