CNN Reporter Says 'F****** N*****' Live On Air

As Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters reports, for the second time in a couple of weeks, CNN has used extremely racially charged language on the air. Susan Candiotti reported on an alleged hate crime in Oklahoma Sunday afternoon, and read from the facebook page of one of the accused.

Oddly, CNN blurred the offensive words on screen while allowing Candiotti to say them aloud, in the middle of the afternoon, on Easter Sunday. Why blur it if your reporter is going to let it roll off her tongue anyway? What’s more likely, that impressionable eyes would be watching CNN on a Sunday, or that they might overhear what gets said on the network if a parent happens to be using the network as background noise?

CNN first used the same vulgar pairing two weeks ago, when reporting on another incident. And CNN brought a sound expert on to state unequivocally that George Zimmerman had said “f****** c**ns” during his call to a 911 dispatcher on the night that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL. That same expert later reappeared on CNN to retract his claim, and change his interpretation of the Zimmerman recording so that he either says “cold” or “punks.” Another CNN anchor, Don Lemon, said earlier in the weekend that the media should stop abbreviating the n-word in its reports. He also used the word.

No other network has yet stooped to the level that CNN is making part of its racial routine. Even MSNBC’s standards appear to be higher. We have come quite a way from the days when CNN’s John King apologized for a guest for using the word “crosshairs.”

Watching the trajectory, tone and choice to air these particular stories, one could easily conclude that CNN is going out of its way to find stories involving what it perceives and reports to be white on black violence. Is Ted Turner’s old network trying to incite racial animosity and violence? Didn’t CNN get the memo that electing Obama would move America into a post-racial state of consciousness and harmony?

Evidently not. In Zimmerman’s case, he turned out to be Hispanic and a registered Democrat. It was only after those two facts emerged, that CNN brought its audio expert back on the air to change his opinion of what Zimmerman said in the 911 recording.