Don’t Worry, You’re Not on Acid, Something’s Just Seriously Wrong With the White House Press Room Audio
If you thought you were having some sort of temporary bout of madness today as you watched the latest press briefing from the White House, don’t be scared. You’re not alone.
Kayleigh McEnany was supposed to be speak with the press on Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s new executive order on policing reforms, and there was a good chance she’d face questions about things like John Bolton’s book and Mike Pence’s op-ed on the coronavirus. Whatever she was going to say though, it was almost totally derailed thanks to a series of technical difficulties that left her audio seriously messed up.
Throughout the briefing, McEnany’s audio had a stadium-like reverb that caused all of her words to echo in a very distracting manner. At other times, it became impossible to stream her remarks when the audio started to abruptly loop or just cut out altogether.
Like the other cable news networks, Fox News’ Harris Faulkner initially tried to air the briefing and encountered the audio problems. She eventually dipped out because of the distortion, and even though she tried to get back in later, Faulkner apologized to viewers for how the audio remained in pandemonium.
This turned out to be a problem for everybody, for the Twitterverse agreed that the bizarre distortions made the briefing almost unintelligible:
What’s up with your audio? There’s an echo.
— Sheldon Beatty (@SheldonBeatty) June 17, 2020
Deffff. I tuned in to the White House feed and it was awful. Idk what’s going on. Just checked YouTube for some other feeds and all of them have this echo
— Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) June 17, 2020
It’s inaudible. https://t.co/lxZvsKKmQT
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 17, 2020
Big echo on the https://t.co/TGgKnoylVJ stream of @PressSec‘s briefing today. It just got crazy worse. A little better now. Still hard to listen to.
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) June 17, 2020
The White House seems to have created a quite literal echo chamber with the audio in this press briefing.
— Max Steele (@maxasteele) June 17, 2020
Watch above, via Fox News.
