During Monday’s White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta battled over various inaccurate news reports about the White House with Acosta arguing reporters make “honest mistakes and that doesn’t make them fake news” and Sanders maintaining that reporters “purposefully” mislead people “regularly.”
Acosta said, “I would say, Sarah, that journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn’t make them fake news.”
Acosta then tried to pivot to another question, but Sanders interjected, “But when journalists make honest mistakes, they should own up to them. Sometimes, and a lot of times, you don’t. But there’s a difference…between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly.”
She added that it’s not an “honest mistake” when people put out information they know to be false or “hasn’t been validated. That hasn’t been offered with any credibility and that has been continually denied by a number of people, including people with direct knowledge of an instance.”
Acosta then asked Sanders to “cite a specific story that you say is intentionally false, that was intentionally put out there to mislead the American people?”
Sanders answered, “Sure. The ABC report by Brian Ross. I think that was pretty misleading to the American people, and I think that it’s very telling that that individual had to be suspended because of that reporting. I think that shows that the network took it seriously and recognized that it was a problem.”
Sanders then moved on to another reporter. Acosta attempted to ask the question he originally wanted to ask, but Sanders refused to take it, saying Acosta had already used his question on another subject.
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