Soft Core Fake News: Playboy Mag Rushes to CNN’s Defense in White House Briefing

The White House correspondent for Playboy Magazine—an adult entertainment publication—sprung up during Tuesday’s White House briefing to airbrush the embattled CNN’s reputation as the very fake news scandal embroiling the network received harsh treatment from Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

After Breitbart News’s senior White House correspondent Charlie Spiering asked the White House for the president’s thoughts on the very fake news scandal ripping CNN apart from the inside out. Playboy Magazine sprung to CNN’s defense.

As Sanders hammered the media for its failures in the wake of the very fake news scandal’s latest developments, Playboy’s Brian Karem jumped in from the side of the briefing room to back up CNN. Karem said:

You’re inflaming everybody right here right now with those words. This administration has done that as well. Why in the name of heaven? Any one of us, right, are replaceable. And any one of us, if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You all have been elected to serve for four years at least. There’s no option other than that. We’re here to ask you questions. You’re here to provide the answers. And what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and see once again ‘the president is right and everybody else out here is fake media.’ Everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.

Sanders put the Playboy man right back in his place.

“I disagree completely,” Sanders said. “If anybody has been inflamed, it’s the dishonesty that often takes place by the news media. And I think it is outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question.”

Sanders was originally responding to a question from Breitbart’s Spiering, who asked Sanders to respond to the scandal engulfing all of CNN right now. Three of CNN’s editorial staff have resigned, but the scandal is spreading quickly throughout the network. President, Donald Trump expressed joy earlier in the day via Twitter when he ripped CNN for all the very fake news it puts out.

Sanders, in response to Spiering’s question, lit into the media as a disgrace to journalism whenever they print inaccurate information. Sanders said:

I think it’s the constant barrage of fake news directed at this president, probably, that has garnered a lot of his frustration. You point to that report. There are multiple other instances where that outlet that you referenced has been repeatedly wrong, and had to point that out or be corrected. There’s a video circulating now — whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know, but I would encourage everybody in this room, and frankly everybody across the country, to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I think it’s a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism. I think that we have gone to a place where if the media can’t be trusted to report the news, then that’s a dangerous place for America. And I think if that is the place that certain outlets are going, particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings, and if that’s coming directly from the top, I think that’s even more scary, and certainly more disgraceful. And I hope that that’s not the direction we’re headed. I hope that outlets that have continued to use either unnamed sources — sometimes stories with no sources at all — we’ve been going on this Russia-Trump hoax for the better part of a year now, with no evidence of anything. Things like the success at the VA barely get covered. They may get covered for an hour at a time, but this story gets covered day in, day out, and I think America is frankly looking for something better. They’re looking for something more. And I think they deserve something better from our news media.

Sanders also said she and the White House are not calling for reporters not to report on Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election, but simply to make an effort to get their stories right and correct before rushing anonymously-sourced often-time-inaccurate misinformation to publication.

Sanders said in response to Spiering’s follow-up question:

I don’t think it’s that it’s expected that you’re not to report on, again, actual news, if there’s something there. But again, I think that there are a lot of things happening in this world that, frankly, a lot of people would like to hear about. Whether it’s job growth, whether it’s deregulation, whether it’s tax reform, health care. I think a lot of those things deserve more coverage than they get. And all we’re saying is, you know, I think that we should take a really good look at what we are focused on, what we’re are covering, and making sure that it’s actually accurate and it’s honest. If we make the slightest mistake, the slightest word is off, it is just an absolute tirade from a lot of people in this room. But news outlets get to go on, day after day, and cite unnamed sources, use stories without sources, have — you mentioned Scaramucci story where they had to have reporters resign.