CNN defends itself from Donald Trump's 'fake news' attack

At his first press conference in months, President-elect Donald Trump refused to take a question from CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta, calling the cable news channel "fake news." After Acosta and Trump sparred, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer threatened to throw Acosta out of the conference, concerning some journalists and free-press advocates.

Acosta, appearing on CNN after the press conference, said that Spicer threatened to throw him out of the conference if he tried to ask another question.

CNN eventually did get a question in, via CNN Politics reporter Jeremy Diamond, who asked Trump why he refuted intelligence reports about Russian hacking and the election. And after the conference, CNN issued a statement defending its reporting.

"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.  The Trump team knows this.  They are using Buzzfeed’s decision to deflect from CNN’s reporting, which has been matched by the other major news organizations.  We are fully confident in our reporting.  It represents the core of what the First Amendment protects, informing the people of the inner workings of their government; in this case, briefing materials prepared for President Obama and President-elect Trump last week.  We 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."- statement from CNN says.

American and British media, among whom was CNN, on Jan.10 informed that the report on Russian cyber attacks on the USA provides information that Russian intelligence has compromising information on Trump. The channel cited unnamed sources in the US government, in its report .

Trump and his team have denied the reports and the Russian government has also denied that it has compromising information related to Trump. 

Politico