Otherwise, as others have observed, this was
Update - 8:00 p.m: Commenters are observing that the young reporter may have been doing a standard audio level check in the way she had either been trained to do one, or as she had learned some of her colleagues had done them.
Essentially, they contend the reporter was merely having Sen. Murkowski say words that would both identify the Senator for archive purposes and fulfill the audio check function. I had thought this practice had disappeared along with a lot of other pre-digital setup procedures. I may have been wrong.
Read through the comments to get some opinions on this.