If you look at the URL the original published headline said 'alleged murder', it's always more passive until something sticks, like a murder charge.
Edit: NBC is not doing their jobs correctly if they make assumptions about the cause of death. We've seen excessive force in similar situations being the direct cause of death but it's not the job of these news outlets to make assumptions on your behalf. An assumption about something that was likely to have happened is still an assumption.
If NBC calls it a murder and a report comes out that definitively shows that the death happened concurrently but was not caused by the use of force then NBC is in the shit because they appealed to your emotions instead of reporting the facts.