BRIAN STELTER (HOST): Let me ask you about this issue of fair coverage, because recently your campaign put out a press release with a pretty provocative headline. It said there was a Bernie blackout on network nightly newscasts. This is based on Andrew Tyndall data we shared on the show a couple weeks ago. It shows that Sanders has been covered a whole lot less than Clinton on the nightly news. So what are you all doing about it? Besides press releases, what are you doing to gain more media attention?
JEFF WEAVER: Well, look, what we're going to do is talk about the issues, whether the media chooses to cover it or not. We have more support than Donald Trump does in our race than he does in his race, frankly, in terms of numbers of supporters, and yet he gets a tremendous amount of coverage because he says outrageous things that are easy to cover. We're not going to play that game.
STELTER: But, that's an incomplete answer. You must be lobbying behind the scenes for more attention, right? You must be calling the networks demanding more air time?
WEAVER: No, that's not how we play it. What we do is, we put out press releases, we hold press events, we hold public meetings, and the media can choose to come whether they want to or not. That's up to them. Sometimes they come. They often do. Obviously this is a presidential race. How much they actually put on the air, that's a really -- a totally different question. And obviously, that --
STELTER: Well, Sanders likes to say -- he likes to refer to the press as the corporate media, the mainstream media. When you say that, do you think that you're purposefully being downplayed because of your economic message? That it makes broadcast networks owned by media companies uncomfortable? Or do you think it's not about that?
WEAVER: I think what it is, as you watch the news, you too often do not see anything that reflects the real struggles that middle income and working families face in this country. I mean, the senator went to Baltimore recently to the area where Freddie Gray was murdered in Baltimore.How often does the media go and report on communities like that that have been abandoned by our society, that do not have an economic investment, there's a lot of despair and lack of hope? Where is the ongoing media coverage of those kinds of quiet tragedies going on in America?
