Tipsheet

S**t Show: CNN Really Liked Saying 'S**t' Covering Trump's Reported Immigration Remarks

Last week, the media and liberal America blew a gasket. The president of the United States asked why are we letting in people from “s**thole countries.” This was during the negotiations between Democrats and Republicans over immigration. Right now, there is no deal on the subject and without a deal, the government draws closer to a shutdown by the end of the week. Yet, the news media, especially CNN, decided to push hard the Trump is a racist narrative they love to peddle, conveniently leaving out that millions of voters who voted for a man whose middle name is “Hussein” flipped for Trump in 2016.

So, to express their outrage, CNN’s coverage repeated the unexpurgated remark to the tune of nearly 200 times in one day’s worth of coverage. Newsbusters, a division of the Media Research Center, crunched the numbers:

NewsBusters staff combed through CNN transcripts on Nexis for the S-hole word in the 24 hours of January 12 – the first full day after The Washington Post reported the controversy – and found CNN staffers and CNN guests uncorked the profanity 195 times in one day.

That doesn't count Saturday, Sunday or Monday. They could be headed for 1,000 by now. It also doesn't count the amount of time they put the S-word on screen (sometimes twice, as you can see on Cuomo's temporary prime time show.)

Compare that to Fox News Channel. Their curse count was zero. FNC told staff and guests not to say it.

ABC, CBS, and the PBS NewsHour were also zero, and the NBC Nightly News uncorked one on January 11. FCC obscenity regulations apply only to broadcast TV stations between 6 am and 10 pm, so cable networks can let it fly without any fear of fines.

MSNBC's prime-time shows (the only ones in Nexis) used 14 S-words from 5 pm to 11 pm on Friday.

[…]

Technically there were 196 S-bombs, since Van Jones noted in Lemon's space “I understand what he actually said was shithouse, and so he didn't say shithole.” Also technically, Nexis showed no CNN transcript from 3:15 to 4:00 am. (We typically don't record overnight.)

CNN’s New Day also rolled out 33 S-bombs in its three hours from 6 am to 9 am. Let’s hope the soccer moms didn’t watch Cuomo and Camerota on Friday. By contrast, Wolf Blitzer’s and Erin Burnett’s hours only aired two apiece.

This comes off another study the MRC conducted, where they analyzed the big three—ABC, CBS, and NBC—networks that reach 25 million people every evening found that their 2017 coverage of this White House was—shocker—overwhelmingly hostile and negative:

The Trump presidency was the biggest story of the year, accounting for one out of every three minutes of evening news airtime — nearly 100 hours in total.

The tone of coverage has been incessantly hostile, especially for a new President in his honeymoon year: 90% negative, vs. just 10% positive (These percentages do not include neutral statements).

More than two-fifths of evening news coverage of the President (43%) focused on controversies, not policies, with the Russia investigation alone accounting for one-fifth of all Trump coverage (1,234 minutes).

Despite their massive coverage of Russia, the networks had almost no airtime for questions about how the investigation began, or whether special counsel Robert Mueller’s current investigation is biased.

What was shocking on CNN was allowing their guest, former CIA counterintelligence official Philip Mudd, to condemn Trump’s reported racism, while spouting off racial epithets (via RCP):  

  

S*itholers built this country 110 years ago. They were called slopers and slanteyes -- Chinese people who built this country.

S*itholers from Japanese internment camps stayed in those internment camps as American citizens. And that's a legacy we bare shame for today.

S*itholers who escaped Guatemala and El Salvador -- civil wars that we participated in -- built this country.

I've worked for s*itholers who've protected this country after 9/11. [Former CIA Director] George Tenet is a first-generation Greek. I guess he is a s*itholer. 

Jose Rodriguez was the head of counterterrorism at CIA, he's a Puerto Rican. I guess he's not welcome. 

I'm proud today. I'm proud to be a s*itholer and I want a t-shirt. #IAmThem #ItsUs. I am proud, yeah. Let's stand against this and say it's not about black people, and it's not about white people from Norway. It's about the people who built America and who we denigrated until we became ashamed and we realize that's inappropriate. And we're learning the lesson again today.

Yeah, we’re all overreacting to these remarks. It’ll pass, as did the Access Hollywood tape, which is much worse that the little cursing that occurred. What a s**t show.