White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sparred with reporters during her Monday briefing over errors made by media outlets in reports on President Trump.

Ms. Sanders disputed the notion that mistakes made by news outlets were “honest mistakes” during a heated exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta.

“You cannot say it’s an honest mistake when you’re purposely putting out information you know is false,” Ms. Sanders said.

Ms. Sanders and Mr. Acosta talked over one another during the exchange.

“I’m not finished,” she responded when reporter Brian Karem tried to cut in.

The exchange with Mr. Acosta comes amid escalating tensions between the White House and CNN.

CNN last week walked back a story claiming that Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had received access to hacked Democratic emails from WikiLeaks more than a week before they were leaked to the public — an allegation that that was presented as direct evidence of collusion with Russians during the campaign.

CNN later corrected its story to say that someone who was not affiliated with WikiLeaks had emailed Mr. Trump Jr. to notify him that WikiLeaks had already published the hacked emails online.

Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked the network over the weekend. On Monday called anchor Don Lemon the “dumbest man on television.”

CNN fired back, accusing the president being a bully.

“In a world where bullies torment kids on social media to devastating effect on a regular basis with insults and name-calling, it is sad to see our president engaging in the very same behavior himself,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “Leaders should lead by example.”

The press briefing exchange began when a reporter asked Ms. Sanders about Mr. Trump’s attacks on a Washington Post reporter for tweets showing a small crowd size at his Saturday rally in Florida.

The reporter deleted the tweet after it was pointed out the photo was from before the event but Mr. Trump has called on him to be fired.

 Going to an Extreme

“This was nothing more than an individual trying to put their bias into their reporting and something that, frankly, has gotten a little bit out of control,” Ms. Sanders said. “We’ve seen it time and time again over the last couple of weeks a number of outlets have had to retract and change and re-write and make editor’s notes to a number of different stories and some of them with major impacts including moving markets. This is a big problem. We and we think it should be something taken seriously.”

Mr. Acosta disputed the notion that reporters were intentionally getting stories wrong to harm the administration.

“Journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn’t make them fake news,” Mr. Acosta said.

“When journalists make honest mistakes they should own up to them,” Ms. Sanders responded.

“We do,” Mr., Acosta shouted back.

Mr. Acosta challenged Ms. Sanders to name an example of a news organization intentionally getting something wrong.

She cited an incident last week in which ABC suspended one of its top reporters for wrongly reporting that the president had directed former national security adviser Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials during the campaign.

“There’s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people,” Ms. Sanders said. “Something that happens regularly. You can’t say — .”

Ms. Sanders was shouted down but continued:

“You cannot say it’s an honest mistake when you’re purposely putting out information you know to be false or taking something that hasn’t been validated or offered any credibility and that has been denied by people, including people with direct knowledge of an incident,” she said. “There should be a certain level of responsibility with that process.”

One reporter pressed Ms. Sanders on why the president repeatedly decries what he describes as “fake news” in the media but that he is not as vocal about Russian-backed firms promoting fake news stories on social media during the campaign.

“The president is simply calling out a very direct and false accusation lodged against him,” Ms. Sanders said.

This story originated at www.thehill.com