a rock star," explained Mills. Those at the event recalled the crowd being so loud they could not even hear Dean; this experience was not reflected in television broadcasts of the rally, as the audio they used was from the unidirectional microphone Dean was holding that significantly decreased the background noise. Taking off his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his blue shirt, he started his speech with "I'm sure there are some disappointed people here." He then motivated his supporters to keep fighting, and state what would later be repeated on news stations: Media coverage Dean, campaign staff, and members of the press who were at the ballroom left with the impression of it being an ordinary rally. Explained Dean, "There were 75 print reporters in the room, and I've never talked to one that had any sense that anything unusual was going on." Trippi recalled, "we were all hanging out at the bar afterwards with press, having a beer. And looking up and seeing, repeatedly, this scene of Howard over and over again. So you looked up and went, 'What the? What's going on?' I realized as soon as I saw it that it wasn't going to be good." Albright-Hanna, a CNN reporter at the event, explained, "there was a sense that it was really loud, but it just felt like a typical rally. Nothing out of the usual happened. Nobody remembered a moment happening at all." She explained that when on the plane to New Hampshire after the rally, "none of the reporters on the press plane were talking about [the Dean scream]"; only when a CNN associate producer brought it up when at New Hampshire was she aware of it. Eric Salzman, who reported Dean's campaign for CBS, revealed it was the network's editors that chose to focus their coverage on the scream despite insistence from journalists at the rally not to: "It was an interesting example of the power of television, because editors said to their reporters, 'Hey, I saw it. I watched it on TV. I know what happened.' And the reporters were trying to say, 'No, it was different if you were there.' And the editors were like, 'Hey. I'm telling you I know what the story is, and this is what we're reporting.'" The Dean scream is considered the first-ever political meme to go viral online. National network and cable channels