CNN reporter leaves mike on during potty break (video) (1 Viewer)

[Chris Lockwood]

A CNN reporter took a bathroom break during the President's speech and forgot to turn her mike off.

video: http://hotair.com/archives/2006/08/2...g-bush-speech/

No foul language or anything, just odd to hear the bathroom chat on the air... how did it take them so long to cut off the audio?

 

[BrettB]

I'd like to be a fly on the wall at their Thanksgiving get together.

 

[ThomasC]

I was watching the speech during my lunch break and I thought it was someone heckling Bush at first. I don't think she left her mic on, I think someone in the control room accidentally pressed a button and there she was. I had been watching the speech for a few minutes and then I started to hear her.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I would say that's the major piece of evidence that it was not a control room glitch. That would have been too easy to find and fix. I would guess that all of their audio was coming from the remote on one link and that she was supposed to comment after the President was finished. She probably accidentally turned the mic on while adjusting her clothes, which is why the audio came out of nowhere. At that point the studio had to figure out where the voice was coming from and who it belonged to. Were they getting cross-talk from somebody else's wireless mic, had some prankster cut into their broadcast? I'm sure there were lots of possibilities going through their heads before they heard enough to identify the speaker and figure out what had happened. Then they had to get a message to the other CNN employees at the venue and one of them had to find out where she was and get a message to her. Not as easy as you might think.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Colton]

At least she wasn't playing "Battle-shits" against another woman in the loo.

- Colton

 

[MarkHastings]

Oh my GOD! A control freak??? LMAO! Imagine hearing crap about yourself over national TV???

 

[BrettB]

I just thought of something.... women don't have the same rules guys do about not talking in the bathroom?

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> Not as easy as you might think.

Should have been pretty easy to go to commercial or put up a "technical difficulties" slide. They were able to do that 50 years ago, why not now?

 

[BrettB]

Actually the incident begins with the word a**holes practically being yelled. It has been attributed to Kyra but it sounds like maybe it's the other woman. Whichever, it would appear they were venting and talking about how a lot? most? men are a**holes.

I'm imagining the uproar if a male anchor got caught saying Bitches! But mine is good.

 

[MarkHastings]

Oh man! I can just imagine a Simpsons version of that sign with an angry Kent Brockman sitting on the john with a bunch of "#$&*@$^" in a cartoon bubble over his head.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

So that's what that was. I just switched to Fox News, whose audio was clear as a bell.
I would have switched to MSNBC, but apparently they're the Jon Benet Ramsey Channel now, and thought shots of Karr walking around town were more important that the president on Katrina's anniversary.:rolleyes

 

[Chu Gai]

Pretty funny! I'd enjoy hearing more stuff like this.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Yeah the "don't talk to anyone unless you both are performing the same function, and even then it is preferably a one or two word gruntlike greeting" rule.

I imagine that means they don't have the same "stare straight ahead" rules either, except that wouldn't really apply because they have those walls and stalls (or so I've heard).

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

In reading more detailed coverage I see I misunderstood. The woman with the open mic was the anchor in the studio, not a reporter on location. Still, it is clear that the studio crew was caught flat-footed and didn't understand where the signal was coming from at first, and that she most likely did follow procedure and turn off her mic when leaving the set, but accidentally flipped it back on in the bathroom. The way this suddenly broke during a conversation suggests that this is the case, since we didn't hear her walking away from the set, entering the bathroom, etc. Luckily for all of us she seems to have been adjusting her clothing and chatting after attending to business. I was in church once when the priest who had served the previous mass stopped off at the bathroom before doffing his vestments and turned the mic back on as he stepped up to the urinal.


Some of you guys may not be aware that womens' bathrooms tend to be divided into carpeted and upholstered lounge areas with chair, sofas, makeup tables and mirrors, etc. and tiled "business areas" that are more like utilitarian mens' rooms. The separate room that looks like someone's living room is more conducive to conversation. (Based on the sonic qualities of what got out on the air, the lack of echo, running water, and so forth, I would assume what we heard was broadcast from the lounge area.)

Oh, and in case anybody is wondering, back in high school and college I worked part time as a janitor cleaning office buildings and a conference center and that included cleaning the womens' bathrooms.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[MarkHastings]

Joseph, I know what you mean. Women chat in the bathroom because they're usually in that area fixing their hair and make-up. Since most guys don't even bother to wash their hands, we never get a a chance to 'chat' by the mirror.

 

[David Williams]

I had no idea that Catholics were *that* strict!

 

[BrettB]

I'm thinking these women's rooms were in some pretty upscale buildings and not typical. I don't ever recall working on a project/building that had these fancy RRs for the women and we do hundreds of public and private jobs/year.

 

[Francois Caron]

Years ago, there was an SNL sketch about two men who wondered why the heck their wives/girlfriends were spending so much time in the washroom. They snuck in to discover the place was a veritable paradise filled with water fountains, fluffy cushions and big hunks giving massages! They were discovered and were threatened to be sacrificed for violating the sanctity of the women's washroom.

 

[MarkHastings]

Ebaums has the video available as a WMV (which can be downloaded easily)...
http://ebaumsworld.com/2006/08/cnngaff.html

EDIT:After watching the Ebaums clip, I'm a bit confused....

If the woman was in the bathroom, where was she doing the reporting? There was approx. 5 seconds between her chatting in the batroom (i.e. you hear the running water when she says her sis-in-law is a "control freak") to her actually reporting on the President (i.e. when she says "Alright, we've been listening in to president Bush....").

You do hear someone say something to her right before she starts commenting, so I assume she had like 5 seconds to get out of the bathroom and starts commenting? (right outside the bathroom door??) Or did she start commenting right from the bathroom???

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> I'm thinking these women's rooms were in some pretty upscale buildings and not typical.

Yeah, the restaurants I worked in ages ago didn't have them.