Fox News anchor Shepard Smith shocked many with his statement on Friday in which he defended CNN after the network was barred from spokesman Sean Spicer’s question-and-answer session at the White House.
“For the record, ‘fake news’ refers to stories that are created, often by entities pretending to be news organizations, solely to draw clicks and views and are based on nothing of substance,” Smith said during his program.
“In short, fake news is made up nonsense delivered for financial gain. CNN’s reporting was not fake news. Its journalists followed the same standards to which other news organizations, including Fox News, adhere,” he added.
Politico, The Hill, BuzzFeed, the Daily Mail, BBC, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News were also excluded from the White House briefing.
CNN criticized the administration’s tactics Friday, calling it “an unacceptable development by the Trump White House,” reports The Hill.
According to Smith, talking with White House officials off the record does not qualify as ‘fake news’.
“Senior administration officials regularly speak without attribution so that the public can be informed of what our government is doing, off the record,” he said.
During his speech at CPAC on Friday, President Trump talked about dealing with ‘fake news’.
He said,
“I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake. A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are. They are the enemy of the people, because they have no sources. They just make them up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said nine people have confirmed, there are no nine people, I don’t believe there was one or two people, nine people. … They make up sources. They’re very dishonest people. In fact, in covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people, the fake news. They dropped off the word ‘fake,’ and all of a sudden, the story became the media is the enemy.”