On January 19, 2004, Vermont Governor Howard Dean stepped onto a stage at the Val-Air Ballroom in West Des Moines, Iowa. The presidential candidate had just placed third in the Iowa caucus. Dean needed to address a crowd of 3,000 supporters packed tightly into the venue.
He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and listed the upcoming primary states he planned to win. He concluded his list with a loud, high-pitched yell that sounded like “YEAH!” Over the following four days, national news networks broadcast the clip 633 times. The event immediately became a massive internet phenomenon.
The Iowa Caucus Defeat
Leading up to the fall of 2003, Howard Dean topped almost every national poll. He campaigned on an anti-Iraq War platform. However, his poll numbers declined in the final weeks before the Iowa caucus. Campaign managers attributed the drop to a broken voter outreach system that contacted potential supporters too frequently. When caucus night arrived, John Kerry took first place. Dean wanted to reassure his volunteers that their efforts were not wasted, so he prepared to deliver an energetic speech.
The Loudest Room in West Des Moines
The environment inside the Val-Air Ballroom was exceptionally loud. Organizer Teri Mills described the venue as jam-packed, noting the crowd went wild as Dean walked on stage. Political advisors had instructed Dean to give the crowd a fiery presentation. Senator Tom Harkin suggested he take off his jacket and let loose. When Dean began speaking, the background noise was so deafening that many attendees in the room could not even hear the words he was yelling.
The Unidirectional Microphone Effect
While the crowd was overwhelmingly loud inside the ballroom, television audiences heard something entirely different. Dean was holding a unidirectional microphone designed to cancel out background noise. This technology drastically reduced the sound of the screaming supporters on the television feed. Because network broadcasts eliminated the ambient crowd noise, television viewers only heard Dean screaming into what sounded like a quiet room. The 75 print reporters in the room did not realize anything unusual had happened. Journalists only learned about the audio discrepancy later.
The Widespread Media Broadcast
News editors focused heavily on the isolated audio. Because the event took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, media outlets referred to it as “I Have a Scream.” The clip aired 937 times in a single week on television. Online, internet users created dance remixes incorporating the audio with songs by Ozzy Osbourne. Following the media saturation, Dean lost the subsequent primaries. He suspended his campaign in February 2004 after coming in third place in Wisconsin.