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108 Members of Congress Express Disapproval for NBC “Under God” Omission
Posted by Randy | June 27, 2011

At the beginning of NBC’s broadcast of the final round of the U.S. Open golf tournament this month, the network played a video montage of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The problem with the video montage was what was not included: NBC twice edited out the words “under God” from the national pledge. If you have not yet seen the video of the omission, you can view it here:

The video montage containing the omissions intended to celebrate American patriotism. Instead, it alienated millions of viewers who place great value on all of our nation’s proud history – including its religious heritage.

Although NBC apologized for the omission, I am concerned that the back-to-back omissions were not inadvertent.  It is also disturbing that the altered Pledge of Allegiance was allowed to air in the first place.

This week, I joined with 107 other Members of Congress in sending a bipartisan letter to NBC expressing our concern.  The letter to NBCUniversal CEO Stephen Burke states:

We live in a society where there are increasing efforts to remove all mention of religion from public life, and we remain dedicated to defending against such attempts.  As a key player in shaping the national dialogue through various media outlets, we are interested to know what steps NBC has taken to prevent America’s religious heritage from being obscured in this manner.  We request that you implement a policy to ensure that the Pledge of Allegiance is not altered in future broadcasts.

You can read the full letter here.

Weigh in on this issue: Are you concerned that a major media network advertently edited out the words “under God” from our Pledge of Allegiance? Do you believe we are beginning to see an increasing trend to attempt to remove mentions of religion from public life? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Comments
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  • Thomas Griswold commented on 6/27/2011
    This was unfortunate. I have always come to respect NBC being above this sort of thing. This is the type of stuff that usually comes from Fox, like doctored pictures, highly questionable 'claims' of mistakes on their news crawl and other well documented 'omissions' that succeed in twisting the truth. The disturbing thing here is, there isn't one blog post by congressman Forbes expressing the outrageously offensive suggestions coming from Fox. However, one only needs to google the blunders and read them one by one by one by one. Neverortheless, thank you congressman Forbes for bringing this to the voters attention. I trust that you will be regularly be doing the same thing regarding Fox News omissions...or at least give your constituents the reassurance that you will.
  • Renee R commented on 9/3/2011
    "It is also disturbing that the altered Pledge of Allegiance was allowed to air in the first place." I just ran across this post, I know it's several moths old. I suppose that to those who insist that we are a "Christian" nation, it doesn't matter that the words "under God" are themselves an alteration to the Pledge of Allegiance which originally was worded "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." For what it's worth, it was also written by a socialist.
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