NBC News was blasted Sunday for tweeting out a half-quote from President-elect Donald Trump’s chief of staff that made it seem the new administration was leaving the door open to a Muslim registry.
During an interview with Republican National Committee head Reince Priebus, Trump's newly named chief of staff, on NBC News' "Meet the Press," moderator Chuck Todd asked if he could "rule out a registry for Muslims."
Priebus replied: "Look, I’m not going to rule out anything. But, we are not going to have a registry based on religion."
The network's public relations department, however, posted only the first sentence in a pair of tweets to promote the segment.
"This quote is in fact opposite of what PR tweet indicates," New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman noted in her own tweet of the exchange.
A senior technology writer for BuzzFeed, Charlie Warzel, lashed out at the tweet as an "irresponsible half-quote w/o even a link for context."
According to Business Insider, which flagged the firestorm,
an NBC News representative wouldn't say if there'd be a retraction, but answered Haberman's criticism with its own reply.
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