CNN is throwing BuzzFeed under the bus after President-elect Donald Trump accused the news organization of propagating the allegations in the piece published by BuzzFeed, saying BuzzFeed’s journalism “hurts us all.”
During Trump’s press conference on Wednesday, Trump refused to take a question from CNN’s Jim Acosta and called CNN “terrible.”
In CNN’s statement, they claimed that, unlike BuzzFeed, they did not publish any of the “unsubstantiated memos” about Trump:
CNN's decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government is vastly different than Buzzfeed's decision to publish unsubstantiated memos. The Trump team knows this. They are using Buzzfeed's decision to deflect from CNN's reporting, which has been matched by the other major news organizations.
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We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate.
Jake Tapper defending CNN, stating, “What I suspect we are seeing here is an attempt to discredit legitimate, responsible attempts to report on this incoming administration with irresponsible journalism that hurts us all. And the media going forward should keep that in mind.”
“It’s irresponsible to put uncorroborated information on the internet. I understand why Trump would be upset about that. I would be upset about it too. It’s why we did not publish it and why we did not detail any specifics from it, because it was uncorroborated and that’s not what we do. We are in the business of sussing out what is true and what is false,” he continued.
In its report, Buzzfeed cited a CNN report that claims intelligence officers were briefing about a potential connection between Trump and Russia.
While CNN has tried to deny any connection between their reporting and BuzzFeed after being called out by Trump, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti allegedly said he was not going to respond to the comments, but that they put BuzzFeed in good company:
(Image source: Twitter)