'Your job is to represent the country, not ours': CNN fires back at Donald Trump on Twitter

CNN has fired back at Donald Trump , after the US President accused the network of not doing a good job of representing the US across the world.

However, the broadcaster took to Twitter on Saturday (25 November) to hit back at the US President.

"It's not CNN's job to represent the US to the world," the network's public relations team tweeted. "That's yours. Our job is to report the news. #FactsFirst."

Earlier on Saturday, Trump had tweeted that Fox News was "much more important" than CNN, suggesting CNN was a major source of what he described as "fake news".

".@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly," the US President tweeted.

"The outside world does not see the truth from them!"

Throughout his electoral campaign, Trump repeatedly singled out the network as the chief perpetrator of a media agenda aimed at discrediting him by spreading "fake news", while Fox News, which is notoriously close to the Republican Party, was routinely praised for its coverage.

Trump's attack on CNN and other major US media outlets have not stopped after he was surprisingly elected president 12 months ago.

In July, CNN's President Jeff Zucker insisted the broadcaster would not "be bullied" by the US President and that it was ready to stand up to his threats.

"He's trying to bully us, and we're not going to let him intimidate us," he told The New York Times in an interview.

"You can't lose your confidence and let that change the way you conduct yourselves. Television is his preferred medium and he knows our viewers can be swayed because they're not watching Fox or MSNBC."

The latest spat between Trump and CNN comes only a few days after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) blocked AT&T's proposed $85.4bn (£64.5bn) takeover of Time Warner, citing concerns over competition and higher pricing.

During his electoral campaign last year, Trump criticised the proposed merger and AT&T's chief executive Randall Stephenson hinted political influence might have played a part in the ruling.

Stephenson described political pressure as "the elephant in the room", which appeared to be a reference to Trump's well documented dislike of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner.

"There's been a lot of reporting and speculation whether this is all about CNN," he said.

"And frankly I don't know. Nobody should be surprised the question keeps coming up."