The internet's greatest reactions to CNN calling Kenya a 'hotbed of terror'

GlobalPost

Barack Obama is visiting Kenya, his father's birth nation, and the question on everyone's mind — if by everyone, you mean CNN — is whether he'll make it out alive.

You see, according to the self-proclaimed "most trusted name in news," Kenya is a "hotbed of terror."

It's true that Kenya faces ongoing security threats from Somalia-based terrorist group Al Shabaab. Al Shabaab has been waging a campaign of reprisal violence, including two high-casualty attacks at Nairobi's Westgate Mall and Garissa University, ever since Kenya launched a cross-border military offensive against the group in 2011. 

Still, a "hotbed of terror?" That's an awfully reductive and stigmatizing way to talk about an entire nation, especially when that nation is located on a continent that's often talked about in reductive and stigmatizing ways. 

CNN could just have easily called the supposed "hotbed of terror" a "nation that faces ongoing security concerns."

Or, it could have taken a different tack completely. The network could have said, for example, that Obama wasn't just heading to his father's homeland, but to "a growing economy with a positive outlook for the future." That would have made sense, considering he's there to speak at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

CNN's word choice has gone over poorly. The hashtag #SomeoneTellCNN has been trending on Twitter, and Kenya's interior minister has now demanded apology, which, as he said during a news conference, CNN would make "if it was civilized enough."

While we wait for one, we have the internet to entertain us.

Here are some of the greatest reactions to CNN so far. So many glorious burns.

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