Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Shepard Smith Reporting,” host Shep Smith rallied to the defense of his CNN colleague Jim Acosta after President-elect Donald Trump called out Acosta’s organization personally for being fake news following a report about Trump’s involvement with Russia.

“[C]NN’s exclusive reporting on the Russian matter was separate and distinctly different from the document dump executed by an online news property,” Smith said. “Though we at Fox News cannot confirm CNN’s report, it is our observation that its correspondents followed journalistic standards and that neither they nor any other journalists should be subjected to belittling or delegitimizing by the President-elect of the United States.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor