I agree. The press was describing it as "cursing"...it's not a curse, it's a "crude" word, perhaps a vulgarity, but nothing that would truly offend, IMHO.
The press doesn't know the difference between cursing and cussing.
My father had the curious attitude toward cussing that one shouldn't do it--usually--because cussing too often destroys the rhetorical effectiveness of vulgarity, making cussing useless when you really need to cuss.
I used to work for a Quaker that could turn the air blue when his farm equipment was giving him trouble.