Sanders Campaign Press Release - Sanders in North Country Calls on News Media to Cover 'Real Problems Facing America'

LITTLETON, N.H. – Speaking to packed town meetings across northern New Hampshire on Monday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders urged the news media to focus on important issues like jobs, income and wealth inequality, climate change, racism, college costs, retirement security, criminal justice and poverty in America.

"What the American people want is a media that looks at the real problems facing America and does not look at politics as though it were a football game or a soap opera," Sanders told supporters fanning themselves with placards on a hot August evening inside the historic Littleton Opera House.

Meeting earlier in the day with reporters outside a middle school in Conway, Sanders elaborated on his critique of the press. He said he was not faulting how reporters cover him but how news organizations too often ignore critical issues for working families.

"I want you to talk about and force discussion about climate change. Do you think you do that enough? I would like you to force discussion of poverty in America. I have talked over and over and over again that 51 percent of African-American kids are unemployed or underemployed. You think that's an important issue? I do. Are you going to discuss it?"

"The American people want a discussion of the real issues," he added. "They don't really care that Marco Rubio threw a football and hit some kid in the head. Not one of the great issues facing our society."

At the last town meeting of the two-day New Hampshire swing, 750 people filled the Littleton Opera House. Hundreds more watched on television monitors outside. On Monday morning, Conway Fire Chief Stephen Solomon said 750 filled the Kennett Middle School Cafeteria. Another 300 showed up at mid-day meeting at the White Mountain Chalet in the small city of Berlin, New Hampshire.

"In New Hampshire we make presidents," Ted Bosen, the Democratic Party chairman in Berlin said. He predicted Sanders would carry the state's first-in-the-nation primary next Feb. 9 on his way to the White House.

"I've never seen crowds like this. I've never seen this many people come to see any candidate on a North Country trip. This is unprecedented," said Julia Barnes, Sanders' New Hampshire state campaign director.

The weekend marked the first Sanders visit to New Hampshire since a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll put him in the lead with 44 percent to 37 percent for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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