I really didn't expect to be using my diary today for this. Hell, I didn't expect to be using my diary today at all...honest. I really expected to just spend as much of the day as I could hitting F5 and getting my stomach tied in knots waiting to see if we all pull it off or if this ends up being 2004 all over again.
Well, my stomach's tied in knots anyway, but I'm also fired up about the alleged "GOP Emergency Alert System" activation in California taking up precious rec'd list space on dKos all day long, and here's why. I work in the broadcast engineering community. I'm probably as close to an expert on EAS as we have here in the dKos community.
And if we're truly a "reality-based" community, willing to listen to reason and not just to our suspicions and fears, I hope you'll take a moment and hear me out when I explain that though there are plenty of dirty tricks going on out there, I don't believe this incident is among them.
Permit me to quote myself, from some comments in an earlier diary:
Triggering the EAS wasn't a snafu. I work in broadcast engineering, and this was, as I understand it, what's called a RMT (Required Monthly Test), and here's how it's supposed to work.
They usually run during commercial breaks on the "LP-1" (primary) station. At the appropriate time, the operator presses a button that sends out the "duck fart" tones, which are actually a data signal that activates the receivers at the other stations in the region.
That's supposed to be followed by an audio message stating that there's a test underway. In an ideal world, that message would come from a source completely separate from the station's regular on-air studio. In the real world, we don't have that luxury, so we play that message from the same computer audio automation system that plays all the rest of the station audio.
Then - and here's what didn't happen - the operator is supposed to press another button that sends out the "EOM" (end of message) duck farts. That tells all the other stations' receivers that the test is over and that they should go back to their own audio and stop relaying the LP-1 station.
If that EOM isn't sent, and if the other stations have their EAS units set up to automatically put RMTs on the air (they can be stored, reviewed, and replayed any time within the next hour, IF there's a live operator at the other stations, but most stations do it automatically), then the audio from the LP-1 station keeps going out over the other stations for up to two minutes.
All that happened - and it was just a single snafu - was that the next thing on the KFBK schedule after the EAS RMT was a political spot, which is almost inevitable on the day before the election. Because the EOM didn't play, the spot went out, as did half a mortgage spot, before the EAS receiver at the relaying station cut off the incoming feed from KFBK.
There have been many such glitches over the last few years, including a chunk of "Sesame Street" audio that was aired by many stations in New Jersey a few months ago (their LP-1 station is the statewide PBS network, and someone didn't send an EOM there). It's a pretty broken system, and many of us in the radio community are trying to make it better.
As I said in another comment up above, engineers take the integrity of the EAS system very seriously, and none of us, whatever our personal politics, would tolerate station management screwing with the system to do something like this on purpose. There are real dirty tricks happening out there, and it's inevitable that we're all more than a little on edge today. I just don't believe this was anything more than a mistake, and I'm worried we're distracting ourselves from the real dirty tricks (robocalls, slimy mailers, etc) by continuing to focus on it.
Look, we're NOT RedState or FreeperVille here, and one reason for that is that we have the ability, as intelligent, reality-based individuals, to subject our fears and our paranoia to the test of reality.
We're very good at that in some aspects - try posting a tinfoil hat diary about how the 2004 election was stolen and see how long it lasts. But in some respects, we're also very quick to see a dirty trick even when there's not one. In this case, I think we're allowing ourselves to get needlessly spooked by an incident that, when subjected to the bright, cold light of logic, was probably nothing more than an unfortunate accident.
Please - especially if it's your recommendation that's helping to keep the EAS diary on the Rec'd List all day - take a close look at the facts here and see whether or not you agree with me that there's an explanation for this incident that makes sense without assuming a political dirty trick.
Let's stay focused on the really egregious crap - the Laura Ingraham phone jamming and the Colorado thuggery - that's rightfully frontpaged - and let's not get distracted by what's ultimately just that: a meaningless distraction. We have much bigger fish to fry today.