Why won't the big news outlets call Trump's racist tweets racist?

Why is the American news media so very afraid to just call Trump's racist tweets racist?

We had another chance to see cowardice in action on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, popular-vote-losing illegitimate president Donald Trump tweeted some awful racist tweets that you can read about everywhere, all the time, because he does white supremacist bigoted stuff constantly and will only continue to escalate it as his day of cosmic comeuppance approaches.

Trump's totally a racist.

The tweets were explicitly racist.

Everyone knows this.

So why did the big respected major media news outlets everyone turns to for breaking news all decide NOT TO CALL IT RACIST in their reporting, and instead rely on embedded tweets, commenters, pundits, and op-ed contributors to use the r-word?

Xenophobic, provocative, and inflammatory aren't synonyms for racist.

Racially charged isn't a better phrase to use in this case than racist.

Just say racist.

CBS morning show: "Critics" say Trump's attacks "are racist." NBC: "Some have branded his comments as racist." But ABC's @GMA and CNN's @NewDay called it what it is: "The president's racist attack."

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 15, 2019

I know that reporters in at least two newsrooms argued with their higher-ups about this language issue on Sunday, writes Brian Stelter at CNN.

But in both cases they lost.

Stelter's own network, CNN, identified Trump's tweets as racist throughout Sunday.

Certain MSNBC programs also did.

Brian writes:

On Fox News, so far as I can tell, the word was only used by guests or attributed to critics.