• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, January 12, 2017

“I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news,” sneered President-elect Donald Trump as CNN’s Jim Acosta tried to ask a question at Trump’s first press conference since well before the November 8 election.

Acosta interrupted Trump after the President-elect and incoming Press Secretary Sean Spicer leveled a vicious attack on BuzzFeed and CNN. They reported the President-elect was notified, in his intelligence briefing last week, that Russian intelligence officials may have compromising financial and personal information about him.

The 35-page report, which BuzzFeed has produced in full, puts forward details about the information, or in Russian -- “kompromat.” If accurate, it could be used to blackmail the incoming president of the United States.

The Trump transition vehemently denied Russia has any compromising information, first at the conference itself, then in follow up interviews later in the day.

“The fact that BuzzFeed and CNN made the decision to run with this unsubstantiated claim is a sad and pathetic attempt to get clicks,” Spicer said prior to Trump taking questions.

CNN never published the report, while BuzzFeed was clear their reporters were unable to substantiate the findings in the dossier.

On CNN later that day, Kellyanne Conway and Anderson Cooper clashed when discussing what happened earlier. Conway contended that labeling CNN “fake news” was completely appropriate. Cooper was more detailed: The Trump camp’s conflation of BuzzFeed’s publication of the report with CNN’s coverage that Trump was briefed on the compromising information was unfair.

In short, it created a false story line.

Interestingly, historically adversarial news outlets have come to CNN’s defense.

“Though we at Fox News cannot confirm CNN’s report, it is our observation that its correspondents followed journalistic standards,” Shepard Smith said on air. “Neither they, nor any other journalists, should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the president-elect of the United States.”

Smith communicated the essence of the problem with how the Trump campaign approached this issue. While it is impossible to know exactly what happened in the intelligence briefing last Friday, the inability of Spicer or Trump to differentiate between the BuzzFeed approach and CNN’s reporting suggests difficult times ahead for the news media.

The Trump administration should expect journalists to stand by the ethics of their trade. To an extent, BuzzFeed toed that line by publishing an unsubstantiated report — while offering key caveats. CNN chose not to publish the report.

The Trump campaign’s inability to appreciate the distinction suggests inevitable future clashes with the press — as well as a fundamental disrespect for one of the bulwarks of American democracy.

While the Fourth Estate must remain professionally accountable, it is crucial to demand accountability and accuracy from the incoming administration. Or as the Declaration of Independence noted: "Freedom of the press is an institutional necessity to achieve a properly representative government."