Is This Thing Still On / Real Life

This trope happens so often in politics across the world, politicians are often told to heed the mantra "Every microphone is live". It's since been expanded to include "There's always a camera, even when there isn't". Essentially, politicians are advised never to say or do anything in public that might get them in trouble, no matter what. But that hasn't stopped people from screwing up...

Politics

• George W. Bush
  • Bush's much-mocked "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit" aside to Tony Blair concerning the Middle East. The full transcript is enlightening, and ends with a literal "Is this thing on?"
  • Then there was the time when Bush had a press conference with some US troops in Iraq, a PR event advertised as the President's chance to have a "frank, spontaneous conversation" with the soldiers. Problem was, a news channel picked up a live feed of the conference room before the event showing a full-blown rehearsal with every question and cute one-liner laid out in advance.
  • "There's Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from the New York Times." "Oh yeah, he is, big time."
  • On the other hand, the famed "Now watch this drive" is not an example of this trope, as he knew full well the cameras were still on him. A Facepalm moment for sure, but not this trope.
  • There was also the time he gave the middle finger to someone at a speaking engagement, apparently not knowing the cameras were still on.
• Barack Obama
  • Characterized Kanye West as a "Jackass" after antics at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Many conservatives commented that they finally found something to agree with him on.
  • On a more controversial note, he forgot the live mic in discussion with Dmitry Medvedev, assuring him that he'll have more freedom of movement after his final re-election.
  • At one dinner the mic he was sitting beside was on when he was talking with someone else and caught him calling the congressional Republicans assholes for their latest antics. However, there's a sneaking suspicion that he'd taken a cue from The West Wing and knew the mic was on, allowing him the chance to vent and express what everyone knew he was thinking.
  • In October 2011, this happened to two world leaders for the price of one. At a G20 summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a liar; POTUS Barack Obama responded with "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!"
• Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was subject to countless controversies that probably would've ended any other politician's career. On October 7th, 2016, blooper footage was leaked to NBC and The Washington Post from a 2005 interview between Trump and Billy Bush, then anchor for Access Hollywood, in which Trump boasted that if you were a powerful Hollywood player you could "do anything, you can grab [women] by the pussy" and they'd let you. Trump talked at length about trying to sleep with Nancy O'Dell, Bush's Access Hollywood co-anchor, with Bush joking and playing along. NBC initially tried to shield Bush from scrutiny, but public outcry forced the network to suspend and eventually fire him from Today.
• This incident from the 2008 Republican National Convention, in which Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy (commentators one would normally expect to be sympathetic to Republicans) made dismissive comments about the party's prospects and selection of Sarah Palin as its Vice-Presidential candidate.
• During the 2016 Republican primaries, MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were roundly criticized by pundits and media ethicists for using their newscast to boost on-air for billionaire front-runner Donald Trump. Eventually audio clips were leaked showing Scarborough and Brzezinski engaging in sycophantic banter with Trump, praising his poll performance and "wow moments." This didn't stop Trump from later repeatedly insulting them both on Twitter.
• Jesse Jackson was caught on mic whispering, "I wanna cut his nuts off," referring to Barack Obama. Made further hilarious by the jerking motion he made, as though motioning just how he would perform this castration. (Didn't stop him from weeping profusely in Grant Park the night Obama was elected.)
• In July 2009 Michael Duvall, a California state assemblyman, was captured on tape describing to a colleague — in graphic detail — his ongoing extramarital affairs with two different women, one of whom turned out to be a lobbyist for a company in a sector (energy) that Duvall's legislative committee was in charge of overseeing. The tape in question was eventually aired by a TV station, prompting Duvall's eventual resignation.
• Former Vice President Joe Biden on health care reform, shaking Obama's hand shortly before he announced the passage to the nation: "This is a big fucking deal!" Naturally, this was picked up by the microphone that Obama was set to make the announcement on. Truth be told, though, this made Biden even more popular, so it can't even be seen as a gaffe, and Biden would later lean into it during his own presidential campaign, though he toned down the language to "big freaking deal".
• Bill "Fuckin' thing SUCKS!" O'Reilly, as mentioned under The Colbert Report above.
• CNN, covering the 2004 Democratic National Convention, cut to a live feed from producer Don Mischer's microphone, just in time to catch him upbraiding his staff for a mediocre balloon drop. Cluster F-Bomb with confetti!
• The classic scene with then British prime minister John Major, where immediately after a BBC radio interview and thinking the mic was turned off, he described some of his less loyal Cabinet Ministers as a "bunch of bastards". The recording heard all.
• While being driven to his next appointment after a conversation with a local voter about immigration, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown infamously called her "a bigoted woman". After the audio made the news, he took a trip to her house to personally apologize. In between, he also failed to realise there was a camera filming him in the radio studio where the news was broken to him on air.
• Similarly to the Gordon Brown incident, during the 1989 election campaign, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke referred to a pensioner who had just harangued him during a meet-and-greet as a "silly old bugger". The muttered comment was recorded by a television crew accompanying the PM and quickly became front-page news across the country.
• In 2009, Chilean senator Fernando Flores is about to finish an interview for the CNN Chile channel. His host makes some questions that he dislikes, then finishes the interview. Just before the transmission was about to finish, a pissed-off Flores rants about how the guy's questions were "fucking dumb" among other things. That part was caught on tape and then uploaded to Youtube... Flores did have a history of exploding at his interviewers, however, having simply stormed out of the set when he got upset at a reply before.
• At a city council meeting in 2010, Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson landed himself in hot water when he was recorded insulting his constituents as "hacks" of a rival local political party because they opposed his rental housing development plan. Annoyingly, the media (and inevitable backlash against the reports) focused on a supposed outrage over his use of profanity rather than the fact that he was belittling anyone who disagreed with him as a "hack" of a local political party.
• Ronald Reagan once, as a part of a sound test, announced "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." However, the joke was leaked (sometimes erroneously reported as having been broadcast immediately), and the Soviet Union got a brief freak-out.
• Flamboyant disc jockey and comedian Kenny Everett attended a rally of showbiz stars who support the Conservative party. Thinking it would be edited out later, in front of thousands of Tory Party faithful and a lot of cameras and press, he opened his address with "Let's bomb Russia!" The worrying thing, and the point the press picked on, was the size and duration of the cheer Everett got.
• The thoughts of Uruguayan President José Mujica about Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband Néstor Kirchner were caught on video. And they weren't pretty.
• A translator at the UN wondered out loud why the General Assembly passes so many resolutions on Israel and the Palestinians every year while ignoring many other conflicts around the world, not realizing her words were being broadcast to the delegates. This incident delighted Israelis, who have been complaining about their treatment at the UN for decades.
• In January 2014, after President Obama's State of the Union address, a TV reporter tried to ask NY congressman Michael Grimm about allegations regarding his campaign financing, but Grimm walked off, refusing to answer. Moments later, Grimm walked back, saying to the reporter "Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again, I'll throw you off this fucking balcony." In April, Grimm was arrested for numerous charges of corruption, which included campaign financing.
• This destroyed the career of former Virginia Senator George Allen. In 2006, Allen was a former Congressman and Governor who was running for a second term against former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb, with Allen also having been viewed as a possible candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2008. Allen held a solid lead until August 11, 2006; on that day, Allen was caught on video using the ethnic slur "macaca" (a slur against Indian people) in the presence of a Webb staffer of Indian heritage. The controversy was magnified by changing explanations from the Allen campaign, and separate controversies over Allen's comments attempting to deny and eventually downplay the Jewish ethnic heritage of his mother Henrietta. Similar uses of racial epithets during Allen's college years also began to crop up around this time. This led to Allen losing by just under 10,000 votes, with that race being the last to be called and which ended up swinging control of the Senate to the Democrats.
• Alt-right leader Richard Spencer had a tape leaked where he goes on an unhinged rant about how "kikes" and "octoroons" ^note  an obsolete term for one-eighth black people are responsible for all his problems and how his ancestors would have "enslaved those pieces of shit."
• With the COVID-19 Pandemic making their normal in-person sessions too dangerous, many courts around the world have turned to telephone or video conference to hold hearings. A hearing in the United States Supreme Court on a challenge to a provision of the Consumer Telephone Protection Act was interrupted by the sound of a toilet flushing. Nobody is quite sure who that was.
• During a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, also conducted by video chat, asking questions of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) was having a bit of trouble with his microphone, then accidentally sent the rest of the committee a triple F-bomb.
• Averted, more or less, by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, when making a joke while waiting to deliver a speech at the DNC. Fully aware that she had a hot mic under her nose, she deliberately censored her own words: "It's Shark Week, m***r." (She later clarified what this meant.)
• In 2019, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was caught on mic referring to a police official as "this FOP ^note  Fraternal Order of Police clown". Relations between Lightfoot and the police were already strained in the wake of the LaQuan McDonald shooting (where an officer shot an unarmed black man multiple times); the comment further exacerbated those tensions.
• During a US Senate hearing on January 11, 2022, Roger Marshall (R-KS) got into a spat with Dr. Anthony Fauci, accusing Fauci of conflicts of interest and claiming that "Big Tech" had made Fauci's financial disclosure statements impossible to find.^note Fauci's financial disclosure forms, dating back over thirty years, can be requested with an online form. After Marshall finally stopped, the mic picked up Fauci muttering "What a moron. Jesus Christ!"
• Former Kansas Senator, 1976 Republican Vice-Presidential and 1996 Presidential nominee and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole became an example during his second run for President in 1988 when he was hoping to succeed incumbent Ronald Reagan since Reagan was unable to run for a third term. Dole had won the Iowa Caucus in early February with his chief rival, Vice-President George H. W. Bush, finishing in 3rd place behind not only Dole but longtime 700 Club host Pat Robertson and looked to be ahead in the polling for the New Hampshire primary the following week, only for the Bush campaign to go on the attack, most famously with the "straddle" ad accusing Dole of straddling the fence on whether he would raise taxes or not. After Bush won the primary, he was being interviewed by NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw and closed by wishing his rivals for the Republican nomination good luck on the next major contest; the mostly-Southern Super Tuesday primaries. Dole, waiting to be interviewed by Brokaw and unaware he was on the air, answered with a blunt "Stop lying about my record". Dole's campaign never recovered, with him only winning a few Midwestern contests before Bush pulled away after Super Tuesday, resulting in Dole dropping out after losing the Illinois primary while Bush would go on to win the nomination and general election.
• In 1988, French President Jacques Chirac made his feelings about Margaret Thatcher known, not knowing there was a live mic nearby:
  "What more does the bitch want, my balls on a platter?"

News Reporting

• Brazilian journalist Boris Casoy was caught on television in 2009 mocking two garbagemen who were wishing a happy new year to the viewers, during the end of the news broadcast. He said "Holy shit, two garbagemen wishing happiness... (sic) (...) two damn garbagemen... one of the most worthless employments" while the microphone was still on. Following that, he was indicted for moral damages and was indemnified by the Court of Justice to pay R$60,000 to the men he attacked. He then apologized for that in another broadcast.
• When showing live coverage of a speech given by George W. Bush on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, CNN anchor Kyra Phillips visited the bathroom, leaving her mic on. Parts of a personal conversation between Phillips and a colleague — criticizing her sister-in-law and giving advice on men — were broadcast live as though it were color commentary. How this was not noticed by a sound engineer before Kyra returned to the studio is unknown.
• During the eighties and early nineties it was very common for US TV networks to transmit satellite feeds without any form of scrambling or encryption so anyone with a satellite dish and satellite TV tuner could view them. Because of this, it was possible for people to watch (and record) satellite interviews as they were being conducted. For live broadcasts, the feed was usually set up far before the interview began and when the network cut to commercial or another segment of the program the satellite feed usually stayed on leading to many real-life instances of this trope. Several of them were collected in a documentary called Spin.
• News anchor Sue Simmons, displeased with some off-camera incident, unleashes a hilarious bit of profanity., angrily exclaiming "the FUCK are you doing?!" She later apologized, but David Letterman still had a tremendous amount of fun at her expense.
• During his tenure on CBS' Early Show, Bryant Gumbel was interviewing Media Research Center president Brent Bozell in 2000 when Gumbel turned around and dropped an F-bomb on Bozell (keep in mind, this is fairly early in the morning). Also keep in mind that he was being forced to talk to a man arguing that gay people should be forbidden to become scoutmasters in Boy Scouts.
• In 2009, Polish sci-fi writer and journalist Rafał Ziemkiewicz said "Grandpa, get the fuck off the air, have some respect and cut that bullshit!" about the National Electoral Commission official during a TV panel. The mic was, of course, live.
• After being given some sarcastic riffing by Simon McCoy, BBC News weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker gave him the finger, then realised half a second too late that he was live on air. His smug grin abruptly turning into a goggle-eyed Oh, Crap! face while he vainly attempts to pretend he was scratching his chin is priceless.
• During the September 11th, 2001 attacks, broadcasters had far bigger things to concentrate on than FCC regulations, so most news broadcasts gave viewers an almost uninterrupted 8-hour stream of Cluster F Bombs and pointed Precision F Strikes from frightened civilians running by the cameras and witnesses who took video^note Mostly on camcorders, either VHS or digital. Some digital cameras also had the ability to take video as well as still shots. In those days, the only cellphone with a camera was the Kyocera Visual. on their balconies and rushed it to local TV. This included lines such as, "This is all fucking crazy! This is the fucking end!"
  • Dan Rather did apologize about the language used by some of the witnesses in a couple of brief films now known to have been made by Australian artist Chris Hopewell from his rooms in Brooklyn which had a particularly good view of the scene. Dan then reracked the tape so you could see (and hear) it again.^note In New York for a project related to his poster art, Hopewell says he didn't even know the first plane was a plane; he had the curtains closed and just heard the noise. Then, he thought firefighters would be able to put it out. He is still trying to process what he saw.
• Another rather innocent thing. A local news station had an anchor who was feeling sick to his stomach, but was going to do the broadcast either way since it was live and he had a devotion to his job. Eventually he started to feel sick during the broadcast and asked them to cut. The cameramen saw that he was getting pretty pale and sweaty, so they killed the video feed...unfortunately, the audio was still being recorded, so viewers could hear the news anchor shout, "GET A BUCKET! QUI-" and then the sound of him throwing up on the floor, and it was broadcast live. Twenty years after the incident, they still played that clip.
  • An incident similar to this happened on February 8, 2024 to longtime CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer, host of "The Situation Room", was in the midst of interviewing Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin (ranking member of the House Oversight Committee) when he became visibly uncomfortable and appeared to be trying to stifle a gag reflex, forcing CNN to cut from the 2-shot image of both Blitzer and Raskin to just Raskin as the interview finished; with some undetermined noises being heard (including speculation that Blitzer might have been heard vomiting) followed by a 7-minute commercial break before CNN legal analyst Paula Reid took over for the remainder of the night's show.
• Canadian journalist Avery Haines (sister of Emily Haines of Metric) fell victim to this while working at CTV Newsnet. While taping the introduction to a news report, she flubbed a line, then made a lighthearted joke about it:
  I kind of like the little stuttering thing. It's like equal opportunity, right? We've got a stuttering newscaster. We've got the black, we've got the Asian, we've got the woman. I could be a lesbian, folk-dancing, black woman stutterer. What's that? In a wheelchair ... with a gimping, rubber legs. Yeah, really. I'd have a successful career, let me tell you.
  • The introduction was rerecorded, but unfortunately a technician inadvertently used the flubbed tape with Haines' joke. Haines was fired; the technician was merely suspended.
• A. J. Clemente holds the dubious distinction of having possibly the shortest career in the history of newsreading, thanks to the first words out of his mouth on his first day on the job being a frustrated Gay... fucking shit^note For context, he was trying and failing to pronounce the name of Ethiopian athlete Tsegaye Kebede as the studio feed went live. He and his co-anchor completed one very awkward news session, and he was fired at the end of it.
• This Mexican news anchor insults a pair of fellow news anchormen on air not too long after the commercial break ended. His reaction is priceless, and then the video went viral and spawned a few memes.
  Marcos Martínez Soriano: López Dóriga ain't shit. Loret de Mola is a dumbass. I mean it, no one watches them! No one watches those two- ...Are we on the air already?
• In a more benign example, on occasion you can hear behind-the-scenes banter between crew members over a slate. One such example is the August 31, 1987 edition of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.
• Legendary television newsman David Brinkley ran into this late in his career. Brinkley was co-anchoring Election Night coverage for ABC alongside Peter Jennings in 1996; the last Election Night he would work prior to his retirement, and near the end of ABC's coverage Brinkley - thinking ABC had gone to commercial - described newly re-elected Bill Clinton as "a bore" and added, "The next four years will be filled with pretty words and pretty music and a lot of goddamn nonsense!". When colleague Sam Donaldson pointed out that they were still on the air; Brinkley responded with "Really? Well, I'm leaving anyway!". Brinkley would apologize on the following week's edition of his political discussion show This Week (incidentally, the last one before his planned retirement) in a one-on-one interview with President Clinton.
• During a general political meltdown in the UK in October 2022, Channel Four News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy was caught expressing his disdain for a politician that he'd just been interviewing when he thought that the broadcast had finished. He apologised and was suspended for a week.

Actors and Actresses

• Several years ago during some sort of Hollywood celebrity event Joe Pantoliano left his mic on after he thought the interview was over and proceeded to take a long and luxurious leak in the men's room, an act which gives new meaning to his nickname Joey Pants.
• There's an extra on the fourth season DVDs of How I Met Your Mother that has a panel of the stars and writers answering questions. Toward the end, Neil Patrick Harris gets up and goes to the bathroom, but forgets to remove his mic. Hilarity Ensues.
• At the end of an interview, having thought that the broadcast had ceased, Mel Gibson added a little something to the end of his farewell to the interviewer he probably didn't intend to go to air.
• Back when Olivia Munn was part of Attack of the Show!, she did interviews around E3 2010. One night, she did an informal E3 stream with co-host Kevin in their hotel room. During the stream, Kevin made comments about Olivia's sex life; not amused, she decided to cut to commercial break and tell him off. Fast forward about four minutes later and she's about to turn the stream back on, but there's a problem...she never turned it off. She left Attack of the Show! later that year, although that was almost certainly unrelated to that incident since she went on to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
• During filming of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, Ian McKellen broke down crying upon seeing a scene with him and the dwarves would be done by green screen, with only pictures of the dwarves to indicate who's talking. He said to himself, "This is not why I became an actor" ...only for his mic to be on and the whole studio hearing it. Fortunately, Peter Jackson and the rest of the crew made up for it later, putting quite a bit of effort into making a personal "relaxation" space for Sir Ian on the set to cheer him up. It worked.
• Mark Ruffalo accidentally bootlegged the first 20 minutes of Thor: Ragnarok by forgetting to turn off a livestream before attending an early showing.

Sports

• During the 1994 Olympics, skater Nancy Kerrigan was waiting backstage for gold medalist Oksana Baiul for the medal ceremony to take place. After having skated the best performance of her life, not to mention having come back from a disastrous year and a vicious attack, Nancy was already irritated at having lost by an uber-slim margin (a mere tenth of a point gave Baiul the gold medal over her). Further annoyed both by the delay and then upon being told that the delay was because Baiul was putting on more makeup (wrongly, as it turns out, the delay was because the Ukrainian flag and a tape of the Ukrainian Anthem could not be found^note Not that surprising considering the fact that this was the first Olympics where Ukraine fielded its own independent team of athletes (although Ukrainian independence had been proclaimed in 1991, at the 1992 Olympics Ukraine together with all the other post-Soviet states - except for the Baltic ones - competed as a part of the unified team) and the very first Olympic gold medal for independent Ukrainian team), Kerrigan promptly snapped, "Oh, come on! So she's just going to cry again. What's the difference?". What Kerrigan didn't realize was that there was an open mic nearby and her snippety remark was just broadcasted to countless people. It was the first of a handful of missteps Kerrigan made that briefly tarnished her "America's Sweetheart" reputation that had been bestowed following her attack.
  • Nancy Kerrigan also got caught making the comment, "This is so corny. This is so dumb. I hate it. This is the most corny thing I've ever done" while sitting beside Mickey Mouse during a Disney parade.
  • When she later hosted Saturday Night Live, during her monologue, she said that what she really said was "the most horny thing I've ever done."
• Three employees were fired from a Des Moines sports radio show when their profanity-riddled argument over credentials in a high school sports league was aired behind a commercial break.
• Beloved Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray, after having to call a worse than usual (even for the Cubs) half inning in '89, was heard over nationwide TV uttering the poignant phrase "God damn it" as WGN cut to commercial.
• Famous British football manager turned commentator Ron Atkinson said, referring to black French player Marcel Desailly: "He is what is known in some schools as a fucking lazy thick nigger." Although transmission in the UK had finished, his comment was broadcast to various countries in the Middle East. He had to resign from his job. It was later commented that had he just stopped at "lazy" he could have been describing any one of the 22 players on the pitch that afternoon.
• In a similar British football incident, commentators Andy Grey and Richard Keys were sacked after they were heard on broadcast making sexist remarks about a female referee and questioning women's ability to fill the role, although separate allegations of off-air sexual harassment of colleagues also contributed.
• When Hashim Amla, a South African cricketer of Pakistani Muslim descent, dismissed an opposition player in a test match against Sri Lanka, commentator Dean Jones quipped that "the terrorist just got another wicket", believing the microphone to be off. Jones was fired the next day.
• The following football season after the "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl, CBS aired a Jacksonville-Cleveland game that New Year's Eve. After a commercial break, the camera was trained on a guy in the crowd who was a dead ringer for Santa Claus and who wore a shirt that clearly read on-screen "Your ass ain't gettin' shit for Christmas!"
• During a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the St. Louis Rams, Rams Offensive Guard Harvey Dahl was called for holding. As the referee was declaring the penalty to the crowd, his microphone picked up Dahl shouting at the ref, "That's not fucking holding!", broadcasting the words throughout the stadium. The ref subsequently gave Dahl another penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
  • Hilariously happened again during a playoff game in 2021 when a ref's mic picked up wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson yelling "What the FUCK!?!" after he was called for a penalty. The best part? The game was being simulcast on Nickelodeon, complete with F-bomb. Patterson was not given an additional unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
• Modern audio mics used at sporting events such as hockey and (American/Canadian) football are sensitive enough to pick up the sounds of the action to enhance the broadcast, and usually the people in the truck are quick enough to switch the audio feed so that the action is all that's heard, but it's not uncommon to hear a player swear just after a particularly heavy bodycheck or tackle, complaining about a call, or expressing excitement. And with many refs now equipped with wireless mics to explain calls, they will also sometimes pick up a player in the background expressing their discontent with it. Most sportscasts simply ignore it happened.
  • A couple of referees have also made the mistake of forgetting to turn off their stadium microphones or accidentally keying up the stadium microphone rather than the internal system officials use to communicate with each other. Some of these comments have been benign and are just notable for their unexpectedness or for giving fans an unusual glimpse behind the scenes (such as when Ed Hochuli referred to a colleague by the nickname "Jungle Boy"), but other officials have been unfortunate enough to be caught swearing.
• Speaking of American football, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselback probably didn't intend for his Badass Boast in a 2003 playoff game against the Green Bay Packers to be heard by every single person watching the game^note Hasselback, who had been on the Packers roster for several years before joining the Seahawks, would later indicate he was just poking fun at his ex-teammates. Unfortunately, it was picked up by the referee's stadium mic — and even more unfortunately, it didn't exactly work out as he'd hoped.
• In early 2022, Peyton Manning had a moment of this on his and his brother's "Manningcast" program during a Wild Card playoff game. Manning was having technical difficulties and apparently failed to realize that while his incoming audio wasn't working, his microphone was still functioning perfectly, so even though he couldn't hear the audio, viewers could still hear him.
  Eli: Let’s go to Peyton, he’s going to break down that touchdown.
  Peyton: I can't hear shit.
  Eli: ...Never mind.
• During the telecast of a Cincinnati Reds doubleheader against the Kansas City Royals in August 2020, Reds (and NFL on FOX) announcer Thom Brennaman was heard describing an unidentified location as "one of the fag capitals of the world," just before coming back from a commercial break.^note  The comment was heard on the MLB.TV internet feed of the game, but not to viewers watching on cable or satellite. Essentially, MLB broadcasts raw production truck feeds of games to subscribers of its out-of-market MLB.TV package. Because all commercials are cued by the network airing the game and not the broadcast truck, MLB puts up a slate muting the broadcast in an attempt to prevent this sort of thing from happening. In this case, however, the slate was taken down too early. Therefore, viewers in-market watching on cable or satellite did not hear the slur, but those out-of-market watching the internet stream did. Brennaman finished the first game and called most of game 2 before addressing the controversy on air in the 5th inning, apologizing for his comments and leaving the broadcast, after which the Reds and FOX Sports^note  the national FOX Sports that Brennaman called NFL games for, not FOX Sports Ohio, the regional network that broadcasted Reds games and by this point in time wasn't even owned by FOX. later revealed that he would be suspended for the rest of the 2020 season's baseball and football broadcasts. He eventually officially resigned as a broadcaster for the Reds a month later. He was replaced by Kevin Kugler on his NFL assignments for FOX and by John Sadak as announcer for the Reds.
  • Compounding the awkwardness of the incident was Brennaman interrupting his own on-air apology to describe a home run by the Reds' Nick Castellanos.
    I made a comment earlier tonight that I guess went out over the air that I am deeply ashamed of. If I have hurt anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart I'm so very, very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith – as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that will make it a 4–0 ballgame. I don't know if I'm gonna be putting on this headset again.
• While preparing to announce a girls' basketball game in January 2022, two Maine radio announcers were caught on live mic calling two players "extremely overweight" and making other derogatory comments. By the end of the game, both of them had been fired.

Radio

• Pat Robertson tried to insult the caller he had just spoken to, thinking his mic was off. It wasn't.
• Casey Kasem wants to know why he's coming out of a fucking uptempo record into a death dedication. (His irascibility was probably exacerbated by the fact that it was for a dog; Kasem was a notoriously kindhearted animal lover.) Kasem knew the mic was on, he just didn't expect the outtakes to ever be heard outside of the recording studio.^note Indeed he did not. In an interview with For The Record, Negativland's Mark Hosler revealed he'd spoken with Dr. Demento — who had worked in Casey's Los Angeles studio, and that was the way Casey acted all the time!.
  • Worse than that, they were sent out on raw feed and picked up by engineers all over the country. Not to mention experimental sound collage group Negativland which combined it with a parody version of U2's "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" plus sound clips of ham radio operators swearing at each other, to create a Voice Clip Song. And this is where the story _really_ starts.
• In 2010, radio host Don Imus was heard mocking Kars4Kids on-air when their ad came on during a commercial break (the group is well-known for having a very annoying jingle), telling them to go to hell, and that he'd donate his Bentley to them.
• In 2012 the British radio station Jazz FM accidentally broadcast five minutes of graphic sounds of gay sex. It was later revealed that an unnamed station employee (reportedly later sacked) had been watching a porn video on the studio computer, without realising that the computer's audio output was also going to the broadcast feed.

Other

• There's a moderately famous recording of a bewildered Brooklyner named Gloria accidentally leaving a long and rambling conversation on They Might Be Giants' answering machine, in which she and an anonymous individual debate the dubious economics of Dial-A-Song. The recording was eventually made into a Voice Clip Song. It was included, apparently unedited and without alteration, on the dual CD compilation which collected their first few albums.
• While attending a course during his time posted to Egypt, then-Lieutenant Charles Hazlitt Upham (later winner of TWO Victoria Crosses) once looked out into a briefing-theatre full of generals and muttered, "My oath — what a galaxy of bloody talent!"... not realising he was standing next to a live microphone.
• During a group photo with his sons in 2005 while on a trip to Switzerland, then-Prince Charles quietly said "I can't bear that man. He's so awful, he really is," referring to then-BBC Royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell. A boom microphone set up for the pool TV coverage easily picked up the comments which were widely broadcast.
• From Reader's Digest: an air traffic controller aboard a US Navy aircraft carrier didn't realize his mic was still on after talking to a pilot, saying "That guy sounds just like Elmer Fudd." After a long, awkward silence the pilot radioed back: "Be vewy vewy quiet. We're hunting submawines."
• Also from Reader's Digest: A woman hosting a dinner party was dismayed to see that her brother had brought his girlfriend, whom she didn't like. She and her husband left their guests enjoying drinks and hors d'oeuvres in the living room while they went upstairs under the pretense of checking on their baby. Once in the nursery, she spent several minutes venting about how much she hated the other woman. Satisfied, she and her husband went back downstairs, only to find the guests sitting in uncomfortable silence—having just heard every word that she had said over the baby monitor that was present on the coffee table.
• This happened to Apollo astronauts a couple times.
  • During the Apollo 16 lunar mission, while the astronauts were resting after a moonwalk, John Young told his colleague Charlie Duke how the potassium-laced orange juice they were given to drink was giving him gas, and how he intended never to eat another fucking orange again after the flight was over. Eventually Mission Control warned him that he had a "hot mic". It seems that his mic key was stuck in the "on" position — quite possibly by some dried orange drink that had been spilled earlier. The very same orange drink he'd been complaining about.
  • Shortly after the astronauts aboard Apollo 13 moved to the lunar module, the mic setting was switched to VOX (voice-operated transmission) by accident. The Capcom first tried to hint that the mic was hot by responding to the astronauts' private conversation; despite the hint, the astronauts still failed to see that the mic setting was not on "Normal Voice". It eventually had to be pointed out directly by the Capcom, similar to the movie. Even worse, later in the mission, Lovell commented privately (he thought) that it would likely be the last mission for a long time; again, the mic was on a VOX setting.
  • Apollo 10:
    Tom Stafford: Man, that TLI was quite a ride. Never forget that son of a bitch. We still recording?
    Gene Cernan: Yes.
• A certain air traffic controller was found to be a little distracted at work when his mic accidentally got switched on and he played his movie to all the passing planes...
• Pilots accidentally broadcasting cabin announcements on the ATC, and vice-versa, is a lot more common than many would like to admit. General procedure for such situations is a round of good-natured hazing from other pilots on the frequency (and occasionally the ATC).
  Pilot: (finishing up an intended cabin broadcast) Again, welcome to New York, it's a beautiful evening here, about 70 degrees right now.
  ATC: Let the abuse start! C'mon, you can't let him get away with that!
  • A Southwest Airlines pilot ranted to his co-pilot about the lack of Sexy Stewardess on his flights, and having to work with only gays, grannies, and overweight folks. Unknowingly, he had turned on the mic, broadcasting to everyone in Texas airspace, but didn't even stop when an air traffic controller tried to butt in.
  • A Southwest pilot managed to broadcast "we’re going down" to the whole plane. In reality, the plane was in no danger; rather, the pilot, either not versed in or with a relaxed attitude to protocol, meant to say "we're descending" to air traffic control but went with a more informal, yet equally disquieting phrase instead, accidentally broadcasting it over the plane's PA.
  • With the exception of Flight 93, the black boxes and cockpit voice recorders on board the hijacked aircraft on 9/11 were all destroyed. As a result, the few snippets of cockpit audio we have of the day come from the hijackers broadcasting threats intended for the cabin to ATC instead (who they otherwise completely ignored).
  • In an example where it's safe to cut the pilot some slack, during the (thankfully non-fatal) crash of British Airways Flight 38, Captain Peter Burkill, an experienced captain who had worked with the company for 20 years, accidentally broadcast the evacuation order over ATC instead of into the cabin.
    Captain: This is the captain, this is an emergency. Evacuate, evacuate.
    ATC: Transmitted on ATC, sir. Fire service is on the way.
• In The Shiphunters by R. E. Gillman, the author mentions how his Blenheim bomber crew paid particular attention to the position of the transmit lever on their RT set after another crew left it on and relayed their conversation over the loudspeaker in the plotting room about the physical attributes of a redheaded WAAF who worked there, and what they'd like to do about it if given the opportunity, until she ran screaming from the room. As they'd also cut off all other transmissions to the control tower in the process, the squadron commander handed out a right bollocking to those concerned.
• At the 1955 Worldcon, guest of honor Isaac Asimov was sitting at the dais as the Hugos were being handed out. One of the winning authors was unable to attend, and editor Judith Merril accepted for him. The presenter announced this by saying, "In his absence, the award will be accepted by Judy Merril, by whom he has been so often anthologized." Asimov turned to the person next to him and said, "Anthologized? Always euphemisms." The microphone in front of him was live, and the hall erupted in laughter at Merril's expense. Asimov was horrified, and for the rest of the weekend (while the other attendees were saying "Anthologize you!" and "Go anthologize yourself!" to each other), he was afraid that Merril would kill him the next time their paths crossed. To her credit, she forgave him.
• During the filming of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a documentary filmed in 2013 about the investigations surrounding the long-time suspected murderer millionaire, Durst left to use the restroom after an interview with one a reporter, forgetting that his mic was on. The sound editor was then treated to the sound of Durst relieving himself... followed by him muttering "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." Durst was arrested in 2015, following the release of the documentary. He was tried and found guilty of one of his crimes but died before he could be tried for the other one.

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