Noonan and Murphy were caught on tape and off air talking about Palin as McCain’s VP choice. Suffice to say, they are not impressed. Noonan stated that the party is using “political bullshit about narratives” to try to tell a positive story about the GOP. Murphy thinks the VP pick is “gimmicky.”

Theoretically, the media is unbiased and impartial. Their job is not to pick one side of a debate, but to present the information to their viewers in a fair and factually-based way.

However, when the media steps out from behind that curtain and show viewers what they really think, it can have a big impact on how people view a situation. They think they’re getting a “behind the scenes” glimpse of how things really are - especially when it comes to politics.

What does it say to voters when the party commentators we trust to get our news about the republican party are caught airing their true feelings about the inevitable crash and burn of the 2008 election? My husband is a die hard conservative and even he was rattled by Noonan and Murphy’s comments.

But here’s the meat of it – this would have been a non-story were it not for video sharing networks. We never would have heard the true feelings displayed here and nobody ever would have known about this at all. Noonan herself acknowledges the power of online video in a piece she wrote on the Wall Street Journal’s site yesterday to defend herself and her comments:

We were speaking informally, with some passion — and into live mics. An audio tape of that conversation was sent, how or by whom I don’t know, onto the internet. And within three hours I was receiving it from friends far and wide, asking me why I thought the McCain campaign is “over”, as it says in the transcript of the conversation.

According to this, it took only three hours for the video to come back to bite her. That’s pretty amazing.

This morning (September 4th) it was the second most watched YouTube video of the day and has more than 728,000 views over the last 24 hours.

Noonan and Murphy on Palin - Most Watched YouTube Video

YouTube Top Ten in News & Politics

1. Joe Biden on Barack Obama
2. Angel Valodia Matos Kicks Olympic Referee in the Face
3. Anti-War Protesters Menace Intrepid Fox News Reporter!
4. Michelle Obama at the 2008 DNC
5. Debra – former Hillary supporter turned McCain fan
6. Tskinval wounds
7. Hillary Clinton: “No Way, No How, No McCain”
8. The One II: Road To Denver
9. “Seven” – TV Ad
10. Passed Over

So what does this tell us? First, it tells us that a number of YouTube viewers are following the DNC and commenting on campaign ads.

Then take a look at #2 – an Olympic referee got kicked in the face?? I didn’t hear anything about that in the news at all! This is one reason why online video is so great. You can find stories that the mainstream media doesn’t think is worth telling.

Speaking of things the mainstream media won’t share, check out #6 on the list. I’ll warn you now, it’s a bit graphic and spoken in Russian with English subtitles. Its a Russian-filmed documentary of Georgian aggression in Tskhinval. Media coverage has portrayed Russia as the militant and stubborn antagonizers. This video tells a very different story – one that I definitely haven’t seen on CNN or Fox. Is it true? There’s no real way to tell, and my intention is not to spark a political debate here. But YouTube is acting as a valuable vehicle for opposing points of view.