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For the second time in 24 hours, I've heard a conversation I shouldn't have heard. Not because I placed bugs around the building or was lingering behind doors with Harry Potter-style extending ears, but because people left microphones open on channels which are fed across the entire Television Centre and Bush House newsrooms.

Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to a feed coming in while waiting for someone to arrive for an interview. The technicians were having a conversation about how the producers never consider them when booking hotels which are near train stations (convenient for reporters) but never have parking (inconvenient for crew with lots of heavy equipment). They then got round to discussing how behind they are on claiming expenses for various jobs, and then critisized one particular exec producer who is very strict on expense claims, refusing to pay them a £5 overspend on the expense limit, despite saving them two last-minute airfares as they agreed to drive instead.

Then, this morning, it happened again.

When we take in pieces from correspondents in Traffic, the programme desk or news editors can request a conference call. This makes a button our screen flash, we can see which desk (or desks) are requesting conference, and accept or deny their requests. However, there are four desks - one at News 24, one at World TV and one on each of the domestic and world radio editor desks - which bypass the request and allow the editor to speak directly down the line without me having to accept their request.

Unfortunately, a 'priority' (non-request) conference button for the channel I was working on this morning was accidentally pressed. Luckily, it wasn't while a correspondent was connected - but I could still hear the audio from the newsroom in my headphones. To begin with, it was just the sound of a newsroom - ringing phones, keyboards being tapped, and the hubbub of conversation. A few calls around the desks asking if they had an open microphone on a priority box proved fruitless.

A call to SCAR, the engineers and the people that keep everything on-air and running smoothly, to see if they could trace where the microphone was, told me that it couldn't be traced: but during that phone call, I heard the start of a telephone conversation in my ear. Now I could trace it: I just had to listen to the conversation and try to work out who as speaking.

Unfortunately for me (and anyone else who happened to be listening throughout the newsrooms), the telephone call involved slagging off a high-up person in News. Knowing I had to get the conversation off a public audio channel as soon as possible, but also knowing the only way to do it would be to speak to the (as yet unlocated) desk and get them to turn it off, I hastily rang around all the desks again - but this time with one extra bit of information: "Whoever it is, they're having a conversation about XXXXXXXX".

Surprisngly enough, this made them turn off the microphone within about a second and a half of the telephone call...