(CNSNews.com) - Incoming White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said Friday during a televised White House press briefing that there is "a little bit of media bias" and that he hopes to "de-escalate that" and turn it around so the president's message can get out to the American people.
Case in point, Scaramucci pointed to the erroneous reporting of CNN.
Scaramucci, a Wall Street investor and former Trump campaign fundraiser, forced CNN to print a retraction after the news outlet published a story on June 22 saying that congressional investigators were looking into his meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian investment fund, days before Trump was inaugurated.
Scaramucci warned CNN before the story was published that it was wrong. He said he ran into Dmitriev while in Switzerland at a business dinner and they spoke briefly but never talked about the U.S. lifting economic sanctions against Russia.
In addition to issuing a retraction, CNN accepted the resignations of three journalists involved with the story.
"In terms of the relationship this press operations has with news outlets. They made a habit of calling news outlets they don't like fake news, calling stories they don't like fake news, calling errors that were then corrected, using that as an example to call entire news outlets fake news. Is that the kind of relationship you want with media outlets? How do you envision a relationship?" a reporter from CNN asked.
"I want to speak for myself right now, because it's my first day on the job. I gotta get familiar with everybody, get direction from the president, but I had a personal incident with your news organization, and I thought I handled it well," Scaramucci said.
"You guys said something about me that was totally unfair and untrue. You've retracted it and issued me an apology, and I accepted the apology immediately, so for me, I've never been a journalist, but I have played a journalist on television," Scaramucci added.
"You know, I used to host 'Wall Street Week' for Fox Business, so I have empathy for journalists in terms of sometimes they're going to get stories wrong, but I sort of don't like the fake news, and if you said to me that there's some media bias out there, if you want me to be as candid as I would like to be with you guys, it feels like there's a little bit of media bias, and so what we can hopefully do is de-escalate that and turn that around and let's let the message from the president get out there to the American people," he said.