9-16 New's with volume off

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWZHTJsR4Bc

When I read the assignment for today I could not help but be excited to watch a news cast without the sound and vis versa. I had never thought to do something like this before to test the effectiveness of a newscast, but I think it is a great way to put television broadcasts to the test. The newscast I chose was one that I looked up on YouTube that comes from a Fox News interview about the intelligence of Sarah Palin. As I sat down at my computer, about to hit play, I decided that I would take a guess at which way would be easier for me to get the whole story. My guess was that they would be pretty equal in getting the point across, but in the end the clip with the audio would allow for more comprehension.
First, I watched the clip with the audio off. What I got from the clip was shocking to me because it was not a lot of information. The only way I knew what was going on was by the caption right below the reporters that flashed phrases periodically that said something along the lines of "if Palin costs McCain a single vote she is sorry" and " Palin thinks we should unite and work together", all comments being pretty typical for a politician to say. I knew, however, that if Shepard Smith and his colleague were talking about her, something important must have gone on.
Next, I hit minimize and only listened to the audio of the clip. Simply by doing this I was immersed in a news story that I found to be almost unbelievable and pretty embarrassing for Sarah Palin. Now, I'm not writing this piece to cut down Governor Palin at all, but if what these men are saying is true (which I assume it is because Fox News is a conservative station, meaning they would not report negative news about their favorite politicians if it was not a huge deal). What I heard was a report about the McCain campaign having worries about Palin's intelligence level, saying she did not know which countries were included in NAFTA and even more embarrassing, she was not aware that Africa was a continent. There were a few other points that they made about her being overly emotional and also refusing to prepare for her Katie Courick interview which she had a hard time answering some of the questions in.
Overall, I liked this exercise because it opened my eyes to how heavily the media relies on audio. After watching the story both ways I concluded two different stories, one that was your everyday politicians saying we need to unite and that Sarah Palin did not want to cause John McCain to lose any votes because of her. The second was a story filled with information that would really concern voters about the credibility of Sarah Palin. I would conclude after this assignment that news programs should put more visual queues or messages about the story being reported on.