Fox News anchor Shepard Smith defended CNN on Wednesday after Donald Trump accused the network of being “fake news” at a news conference for reporting on the existence of a Russian dossier of unverified allegations about the president-elect.

“President-elect Trump today told CNN’s Jim Acosta that his organization amounts to fake news. CNN’s exclusive reporting on the Russian matter was separate and distinctly different from the document dump executed by an online news property,” Smith said, drawing a distinction between CNN’s reporting and that of BuzzFeed News, which released the entire contents of the Russian dossier.

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

Also Read: CNN Denies Donald Trump's 'Fake News' Allegations: 'We Are Fully Confident in Our Reporting'

Earlier in the day, CNN released a statement responding to Trump’s allegation that CNN is “fake news” during his first press conference as president-elect.

“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 network said. “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.”

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/fox-news-defends-rival-cnn-against-donald-trump-213951823.html

Here’s what Shep had to say about @realDonaldTrump 's criticism of the media #TrumpPressConference pic.twitter.com/92umEbMjD3

— Shepard Smith (@ShepNewsTeam) January 11, 2017