Tim Russert died today of an apparent heart attack. I was told the news from a friend of mine who leans liberal while we were hanging out, & I said; well.. Tim was one of the people in the media these days who I give credit to for not being afraid to ask the honest, tough questions. My friend looked down at his laptop & said to me that “that’s is exactly what they wrote about him here”.
I wasn’t surprised, because it is definitely true. We may not have agreed on everything, but I think it’s safe to say that America lost a great news anchor, & he will be missed dearly.
My thoughts & prayers go out to Tim’s family & colleagues during this difficult time.
Looks like someone in that MSNBC crew or staff is trying to hide what actually occurred when the ghost whisper saying “He Raised Taxes” was mysteriously heard right before Romney responded at this weeks Republican debate. They need to come clean about exactly how this happened. If they are going to claim it was an audience member, then tell us where the mic was exactly, & whether it was a unidirectional mic, (a mic that pics up from only one direction) or an omnidirectional mic (a mic that can pic up in all directions.) I don’t see any logical reason a media studio would have an omnidirectional mic set up during a debate, let alone why the sound engineer would have a mic in the audience wide open (turned up) while a Presidential candidate was speaking. Omni mics would only be useful to catch applause, & this wasn’t that kind of taping.
Nobody seems to have mentioned the most important fact of the matter. The “professional” main stream media has people like Helen Thomas trashing bloggers for being “unprofessional”, yet they can’t even figure out which mics were open in their studio, who was standing by them, or if the signal path was breached.
With that kind of security it’s a wonder something worse didn’t happen. People who speculate & slander the Romney camp without proof about how it happened need to pipe down, because there a lot you may not know about todays sound technology.
As a professional & trained sound engineer, I can assure you that if any wireless mics were used? Anyone in or even near the studio could have got on those frequencies with the right knowledge. I’d be willing to bet wireless microphones were in the signal chain. Furthermore, any of the MSNBC staff off camera could have been on those frequencies with a mic, or hard wired with a mic.
Secondly, this appears to have been a cue to Tim Russert to expand on his question with Romney, not a prompt for Romney himself. Notice how Russert butts in interrupting Romney to ALSO say that Reagan raised taxes, right after the whisper. This was also a veiled slam on Reagan politics by the way, & planned carefully by MSNBC. It’s designed to imply that anyone who associates themselves with Reagan will raise taxes, & is therefore a bad candidate.
Thirdly, this is the run up to the PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, & if this action is in it’s final result slandering ANY of the candidates, there should be a thorough investigation by the proper authorities, as this isn’t an election for Class President of some high school.
Lastly, this clearly just goes to show that the Main Stream Media cannot be trusted for competency in reporting.
