In the midst of a heated but civil debate on CNN Tuesday night, host Erin Burnett admitted on her eponymous show to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway that her program should not have aired a chyron on Monday’s show suggesting that Donald Trump was in favor of “racial” profiling.

Burnett was twice pressed by Conway on why her show made such an editorial error and so Burnett paused the debate to offer an explanation of regret.

“I want to interrupt you there, I want to interrupt you there, because that was a lower third as we call them on our screen. It actually happened during this hour and I want to make it clear the word “racial” should not have been put in quotes,” she explained.

Building up to that point, Burnett was questioning Conway about why Trump doesn’t follow the lead of Hillary Clinton in having formal press conferences (with Trump’s drought at 55 days on Tuesday) irregardless of Clinton’s 250-plus days of silence on the press conference front.

In response, Conway pointed out that it’s easy for Clinton to be having press conferences now because, as my colleague Scott Whitlock and I have chronicled, many of her questions are nothing but softballs:

Well, when Hillary Clinton is in front of the press, she's got the press asking her these — they might as well just ask her, lovely blouse, where did you get it today, Mrs. Clinton? I mean, some of these questions are not journalism. Some of them are just, it's great to see you, do you think this is will hurt Donald Trump because he — I mean, did you see this question from a Bloomberg reporter yesterday?

<<< Please consider helping NewsBusters financially with your tax-deductible contribution today >>>

Conway’s first mention of the chyron was initially shot down by Burnett as she continued pushing about when Trump will have a formal press conference again, so Conway invoked the “racial” headline again in talking about how the Trump campaign doesn’t “get fair questions.”

“Just last night, CNN added in the word “racial” that he never mentioned with profiling. Your network added in racial to make it look like he has said “racial profiling” where he never had,” Conway again stated.

Having twice arisen in the span of a few minutes, Burnett finally relented and addressed it (to which Conway said, “thank you”) before going onto offer a defense of the decision:

I want to interrupt you there, I want to interrupt you there, because that was a lower third as we call them on our screen. It actually happened during this hour and I want to make it clear the word “racial” should not have been put in quotes. But I want to ask you something about this though, because a lot of other people were happy to describe it as racial profiling without putting quotation marks around it because Donald Trump continually does speak about profiling related to Muslims.

The relevant portions of the transcript from CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on September 21 can be found below.