CNN is defending its decision to publish a story based on an unverified report that claimed the Russian government has compromising financial and personal information related to President-elect Trump.
The network released a statement Wednesday following a press conference Trump hosted in New York, wherein the president-elect called CNN “fake news” and called BuzzFeed “a failing pile of garbage” for posting the actual unverified report, along with a story that called on Americans to decide on their own whether it’s true.
Recommended Stories
“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,” CNN said in a statement.
The network said it had “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.”
CNN’s own report only characterized what was an anonymously sourced document but did not, as BuzzFeed did, publish the full report that included many lewd and salacious details.
In its statement, CNN accused Trump of conflating its own more general reporting on the documents with BuzzFeed’s reporting.
Trump and his team have denied the reports and the Russian government has also denied that it has compromising information related to Trump.
