I'm sure Linus used clean language 99.999% of the time. He sends dozens of mails daily, so his rate of swearing is not out of the ordinary. The media made it to be something newsworthy, when it was not.
Well, there may be some selective reporting, but I'm pretty sure you could go through the public writings of other prolific open source contributors (e.g. Larry Wall) without even digging up ONE instance of public profanity.