If you haven't seen or heard about it, when NBC Sports began its coverage of the U.S. Open on Sunday it opened with one of those video montages that are meant to stir emotions.
It sure did.
By twice editing out the words "under God" from the audio of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the network sparked a firestorm of complaints on Twitter and caused enough of a protest that before the broadcast was over, the network's Dan Hicks was on the air apologizing.
"It was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation's capital for the third time," Hicks said. "Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiancethat was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone, and we'd like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it."
This video of the NBC opening has been getting lots of views today.
The same person also captured video of Hick's statement.
Update at 12:35 p.m. ET:Students of history remind us that the words "under God" were added to the Pledge in 1954.
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