See more in the cross-post on the NewsBusters blog.
NBC News took the step of acknowledging on Friday’s Today show that the man accused of killing three Muslims in North Carolina held atheist beliefs after having ignored that element of this tragic story in both their morning and evening newscasts since the first stories aired on Wednesday night.
During the program’s 7:00 a.m. hour, newsreader Natalie Morales referred to Craig Stephens Hicks in a 27 second brief as “a self-described gun-toting atheist” and is now “facing first-degree murder changes.” The brief did not bring up Hicks’s liberal political beliefs (as have fellow networks ABC and CBS in their coverage).