Chris Girard
Honors Writing Symposium, MWF 2:30-3:45
Professors Dulgarian, Byrne
11 April, 2007
The Sound Bite, the Television Newscast and the Coverage of Politics
My opponent, my opponent won’t rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes and I’ll say no. And they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again, and I’ll say, to them, ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’ (Bush)
When George Herbert Walker Bush spoke these now infamous words at the 1988 Republican National Convention, he had no idea how well they would catch on. Unfortunately for Bush, his words would not “catch on” in his favor. “Read my lips: no new taxes.” Punchy and bold. Grabbing and provocative. But above all: absolute and confining. A sound bite was born. Bush’s convention speech pledge, encapsulated in a short video clip, would be replayed throughout the television universe for years, especially after the Bush Administration raised taxes in 1990. Bush, failing to rectify the error of his words, lost his attempt at reelection in 1992.
—Introduction, Thesis, and Definitions—
Introduction
“Sound bites,” as they are commonly known, have deeply and profoundly changed the world of television journalism, particularly its coverage of politicals. In the sound bite era, all news stories, including factual and event-based reporting (fires or accidents, natural disasters, or human interest stories) experience significant structural and methodological changes, but coverage of stories in the political realm have changed most of all. Politics, the process by which groups make decisions, can be observed in all human interactions (albeit in differing forms), including those of the religious, familial, academic, corporate, and governmental spheres (“Politics”). In a democracy, political matters can be defined as those where one or more parties are attempting to win the loyalty or support of another party (or parties) or the public at large. Fires and car accidents are not political[1]. They are not in the business of persuasion, nor do they aim to pander or stage politicized stunts. Sound bites incorporated into a story on a dog show will not mislead a viewer in such a way that they will come away with erroneous interpretations of the event that took place. In such “factual” stories, the viewer will not have a political opinion requested of them. Most of the information construed in the report is matter-of-fact[2]. However, when it comes to politics, the use (or misuse) of sound bites in a news story can mean everything. Comprehensiveness and close analysis are crucial in the reporting of politics, as the meaning of politician’s[3] words is difficult to deconstruct when out of their original context (this, of course, can be a great boon to politicians). Upon critical analysis, political rhetoric often means the exact opposite of what a 10 second sound bite, haphazardly transplanted into a news report, appears to mean at first glance. A complex idea—political or non-political—cannot be comprehensively encapsulated in a 10-second clip. The sound bite has had a detrimental effect on the quality of news coverage, and impoverishes citizens of well-constructed reporting. David Scheuer, author of The Sound Bite Society, states:
The outward symptoms of that impoverishment are everywhere: mindless and manipulative political advertising, shallow political dialogue and equally shallow TV news programs; a wide (but not always informed) mistrust of both media and political figures and institutions; electoral turnout below half of all eligible voters. (Scheuer 3)
The sound bite, however, is too profitable a device to fall out of use simply because it cannot accurately represent context and meaning. Sound bites provide politicians with free, easy, timely publicity (provided they are not “gaffe bites”—sound bites of a politician’s mistake). For their part, networks[4] fill up space in their newscasts and bring themselves closer to the next set of commercials without inciting controversy and anger (against themselves, not the politicians) over the content of their stories. Sound bites can even help networks promote their own product when their clips are “bitten”[5] by other networks. The sound bite is a product of technological advances in the forming of television news, and namely, the switch from manual film editing to computer editing. This switch facilitated the use of the sound bite and transformed the conventional wisdom and methodology of political reporting.
Thesis
The sound bite is a weak journalistic tool, and contributes to the fragmentation of television newscasts. News can no longer be presented as analytical, pensive footage, but must be a rapidly-moving series of images, sound bites, and audio from correspondents that tells a story—the news narrative. Marshall McLuhan calls this fast-paced narrative the television “mosaic” form. The sound bite produces a news product that attracts viewers, and as television news is driven by ratings, not information, the sound bite has a strong allure. Sound bites decontextualize statements, and despite newsmen’s efforts to explain sound bites within news reports, a change in meaning is inevitable. Politicians have altered their rhetoric to fit within the world of sound bite news. Using snappy, punchy language, politicians speak in “the language of sound bites” to attempts to be quoted (in a sound bite) on news programs. Sound bites provide a means for politicians to communicate a message to the public wherever a camera is present. Whenever a politician’s words are recorded, they are being surveyed in the newsroom, which in turn could lead to the selection of bitable sections to be rebroadcast on the news. The sound bite exists within the symbiotic relationship of politicians and newsmen. In continuing the rhetorical strategies and journalistic practices within which the sound bite exists, these two groups follow a “sound bite contract” of sorts. Unless the practices of one or both of these parties changes, the sound bite will remain deeply entrenched in television news.
Layout of paper
Although the sound bite can be used on television outside of the journalism field, this paper will focus only on the applications of the sound bite in the journalistic context. Sound bites are one of the favorite devices of political strategists in composing political advertising, and in particular, “attack ads.”[6] Because of the importance of this use of the sound bite, this paper will not attempt to include it as subject matter, for fear of oversimplifying and not devoting proper effort for analysis and explanation.
The progression of this paper’s argument is topical, and begins with a definition of the sound bite and an explanation of the theories of Marshall McLuhan (namely, “the medium is the message”). Next, the paper will move onto a historical survey of the sound bite (tracking, in part, the trend of the shortening of the sound bite) and the television medium. From there, the paper will discuss the ramifications of the sound bite on the nature of political events and the formulation of rhetoric by politicians. The sound bite has turned what were at one time process-oriented governmental proceedings (such as those in Congress) into jockeying events in which politicians try to “score” top sound bites on the news. Also, politicians and political strategists have adapted masterfully to the sound bite, embracing the “punchiness” and rhetorical grandstanding of “the language of sound bites” and learning how to fill speeches and statements with “biteable” bursts of language. Then we will move into the newsroom to explore the technical elements of the sound bite and how the sound bite relates to the composition of the newscast. Here, it will be shown that the politician-newsman relationship is symbiotic, and that the sound bite fulfills urgent needs of both groups: time taken occupied on newscasts for newsmen and publicity for politicians. An analysis of the economic aspects of the sound bite will then occur, centering on news networks, ratings and self-promotion. It will be seen how the sound bite can act in boosting ratings for a newscast while giving a network visibility in the news universe when material from their programming is rebroadcast on other stations. After that the paper will explore “image politics” and the overwhelmingly superior role a politician’s personality (verses a politician’s policies) plays in voters’ decision-making processes. The paper will then move on to a case-study of Joe Biden’s recent comments on Barack Obama and the media-fed controversy that resulted. This will provide an explanation of the workings of the “gaffe bite” and how the television newscast swarms around politicians’ verbal mistakes, which can do them serious harm. The paper will then conclude with closing comments and final evaluation of the thesis. Headings and footnotes have been added to add to the ease of navigating the paper.
Definition
The exact definition of a sound bite is not standardized like a unit of measurement, but sound bites have common characteristics and are easily recognizable. The following is my personal definition of the sound bite, observed from my research and my personal study of the television medium:
1.) First and foremost, a sound bite is a relatively brief video and audio excerpt clip of a speaker making a statement. An attributed quotation or clips with voice-overs are not sound bites[7].
2.) Sound bites cannot stand alone. Newscasts must in some way preface or introduce a sound bite via verbal explanation, graphics, captions, or voiceovers. They are not self-sustaining.
3.) Sound bites are mono-topical. A proper sound bite will last long enough for a speaker to comment on one topic, and end when he/she moves on to something different.
4.) Sound bites are memorable. Newsmen and newswomen aim to select sections of statements that are catchy, emotional, or are repeated or stressed by the speaker.
5.) Although an audio clip with no video (as on radio) can be a sound bite, the visual component of television sound bites is crucial. The visual components are often as influential, or more influential, than the verbal element of the sound bite.
The study of the sound bite must be understood within the framework of the critical study of the television medium. Television has distinctive qualities, and viewers consume television and are affected by television differently than any by other medium. Marshall McLuhan, estimable author of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, developed the revolutionary concept that “the medium is the message” (9). Writing “it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action,” McLuhan argues that in the information process, media themselves are more important than the content they deliver. McLuhan illustrates this dramatically (and hyperbolically) when he claims that it would not matter whether television broadcasted all children’s shows or all violent programming—the effects of the extension of human consciousness, which television requires[8], and television consumption would be the same[9]. This is applicable in the study of the “content” of television sound bites. McLuhan marks two groundbreaking technological advances in modern human history: the use of movable type for printing in the mid-fifteenth century and the harnessing of electricity in the late nineteenth century. These advances, McLuhan says, greatly altered the media of their respective eras, and in doing so, greatly altered content as well. He writes “slow down type-setting and news gathering, and there occurs a change, not only in the physical appearance of the [newspaper] text, but in the prose style of those writing for it” (206). “The medium is the message”: the nature of the communicative device is more important than the communication itself. Inevitably, this creates favorable (and unfavorable) types of information for each medium. Television demands immediacy: “the introspective life of long, long thoughts and distant goals, to be pursued in lines of Siberian railroad kind, cannot coexist with the mosaic form of the TV image that commands immediate participation in depth and admits of no delays” (325). Sound bites help viewers indulge in this preference.
—History of Sound Bite and the Television Medium—
The sound bite is ever-present and ever-dominant in today’s television news program. The exact point in time where the sound bite began being used is a difficult to determine fact, but it came into prominence during the 1952 Presidential election, a time when televisions were becoming more and more common in the American home and when networks were in a fierce competition for viewers. Todd Gitlin writes “the term sound bite made the transition from backstage professional jargon to the public lexicon because sound bites became standard practice” by politicians and the newscasters who delivered them (Gitlin 96).
In 1968, the average “sound bite” was 42.8 seconds long[10] (Russomanno). The practical conditions of the editing process motivated the extended length of these clips. When putting together newsreels, newsmen performed the laborious and time-consuming task of physically cutting sections of film tape together. Naturally, due to the difficulty of editing, news broadcasts featured lengthened shots (Barnhurst and Steele 21). This was not just true for the length of sound bites, but for shots of anchors, correspondents, file footage, and scenic imagery as well.
Editing programs on computers have since replaced manual methods, and can splice digitally captured video and audio together with relative ease. While the bulkiness of manual editing mandated longer shots, video editing facilitates a new, more rapid pace for television news: “when previously they acted as news readers on the air, journalists now rejected the old structure based on radio-news-with-pictures and developed something unique to television: a chain of images overlaid onto a fast-paced narrative” (Barnhurst and Steele 21). The transformation was drastic. An age of “new television” was born. This is a prime example of change in a medium reflected in a change of the medium’s content message. As the technological capabilities of the news networks changed, the content of their newscasts evolved. One of the leading tools of developing this narrative structure is the sound bite, which “was born in the news room,” Sig Mickleson writes, “not in the fertile brain of the candidate handler” (167). By 1988, only 1% of sound bites were at least 40 seconds long, and the average sound bite length dropped to 9.8 seconds (Russomanno). The trend of sound bite shortening has continued, and in 2000, the average sound bite was 7.8 seconds long (Gitlin 96).
Critics of network newscasts reasoned that the brevity of sound bites used in news reports was manipulative and unfair to politicians. In response to these cries, CBS took what was to be a major transformative step in their journalistic practice, instituting an “edict during the summer of 1992 that all presidential candidate sound bites on evening newscasts would not be less than thirty seconds, except under unusual circumstances” (Russomanno). The events that ensued were disturbing. “CBS executive producer Erik Sorenson eventually scaled back the 30-second rule to twenty” seconds and even made exceptions for bite with lengths in the high teens or for “especially punchy quotes”. Sorensen said the decree “felt awkward,” that the time parameter was “arbitrary,” and that “producers who grind out four or five pieces a week are used to a certain kind of pace” (Russomanno). In two minute long reports, expectations of the inclusion of thirty second clips of both George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton (never even mind Ross Perot) was difficult, if not impossible. Reporters were given a decree that attempted to improve the level of their journalism, but were not given realistic time parameters to work with. As the length of the newscast did not change, and the number of segments in a program did not change, segment length could not be extended. “Time dictates almost everything in radio and television news,” Clarence Jones writes. Due to a lack of sufficient time, a change of rules did not result in a lasting change of content.
Recalling McLuhan’s theorem that “the medium is the message,” it follows that a change in the medium itself results in a change in message (or content). One major development in the television medium that has greatly impacted the presentation of TV’s message is the remote control. “Remotes,” as they are sometimes called, were first available on the commercial market in 1956[11] (“Remote”). Remotes give television viewers more sovereignty over what they choose to watch. If they are bored or offended by a particular program, or if a show goes to a commercial break, they can, without the obstacle of having to physically move to the television, change the channel. Television viewers, as a result of this immediacy and ease the remote brings to “channel flipping,” have become more discerning—or maybe just less patient—in what they watch. Some viewers may switch away from a newscast during a segment (entertainment, for example) that does not interest them. Viewers of sports games may even switch channels in between pitches (if watching baseball) or downs (if watching football). Television newscasts, as a result of a viewer’s expedited ability to change channels, have become very conscious of audience preference of nearly everything, including segment length, interaction between broadcast personalities (often called “banter”), news studio color scheme and layout[12], what stories are covered, and most significantly, how stories are presented. As has been stated, the sound bite helps networks present their newscasts as narratives by altering setting and keeping the viewer engaged. And of course, keeping the viewer engaged is paramount in keeping them from changing to another channel.
The C-SPAN (the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) television networks are an interesting case of “anti-sound bite” political coverage: all raw, unedited material and little to no fragmentation of events for news reporting purposes. Founded in 1979, C-SPAN (along with sister station C-SPAN2) devotes itself to recording every moment of United States Congressional floor proceedings (and a significant portion of committee proceedings) for viewing by the public. C-SPAN, a non-profit organization, does not sell advertisements. Fees from cable and satellite television customers are C-SPAN’s primary source of funding, and contrary to popular belief, the network receives no money from the US government. Ironically, the presence of C-SPAN cameras in the chambers of Congress has facilitated the sound bite, providing an endless supply of stock footage for networks to choose from. C-SPAN has a small, devoted cache of viewers, and does not exist to compete with any of the major newscasts or news networks. Representatives of the largest cable companies make up C-SPAN’s board of directors, and these individuals surely do not want more competition for own their respective news networks (“C-SPAN”).
In 1982, three years after the launch of C-SPAN, two public affairs programs made their respective television debuts: The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire[13]. These shows contrasted old-style political affairs programming, moving at a faster rate to better fit the pace of “new television.” Gitlin writes that “the McGlaughlin Group sped up the pace of pundit gabfests, making glibness, quickness, loudness, and rudeness routes to pundit fortunes” (97). MSNBC pundit/anchor and former McGlaughlin Group panelist Chris Matthews believes this element of speed was essential: “John knew that speed was the missing element in public affairs television” (Gitlin 97). Crossfire (cancelled in 2005 by CNN) is another prime example of speed and loudness in political debate programming. Unlike the McLaughlin Group, Crossfire is broadcast live in front of a studio audience, which encourages pandering and grandstanding by panelists. Often times, panelists (James Carville especially) would completely ignore other members of the panel while speaking, facing out to “work the crowd”: speaking directly to the audience to try to get them to react (“Crossfire”). Crossfire panelists, compelled to draw rounds of applause from the audience, would work in punchy, emotional lines into their remarks to cue the audience. The goal was not defeating the opposite side of the panel (the show divided panelists into the left versus right dialectic to promote simplicity and clearness of narrative) through logic or reason, but to speak in the language of sound bites to drive the audience into a frenzy of cheers and applause, embarrassing the other side into conceding a point.
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of the news media in the United States. Twenty years later, in 2004, a mere five corporations—Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom—control the majority share of the United States’ news media (“Media”). Television networks find it virtually impossible to survive outside of these major companies. With so few companies owning the networks that make the news, conflicts of interest in the reporting of news are frequent. In addition to the tailoring of news’ subject matter to fit the expectations of the viewing audience (who look to be entertained), news must satisfy the corporate interest of whichever media company the newscast’s network belongs.
—Sound Bite Driving Political Presentation, Influencing Political Rhetoric—
The proliferation of the sound bite encourages and rewards superficial, slogan-heavy speaking with exposure on newscasts, encouraging politicians to fill their remarks with snappy, rhetorical quips. Jeffery Scheuer dubs this the “politics of zingers”: a content-light style of discourse that rewards rhetors for climbing onto their soapboxes and steering clear of in-depth discussions of issues. This is the primary reason why former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, for example, was not the subject of many sound bites. Although the implications of lowering/raising interest rates greatly affects the entire economy and is usually a top news story, it is not appropriate subject matter for a sound bite, as it is nearly entirely analytical, and lacks slogans or flashy images. A 15 second excerpt from a statement by Greenspan on the relation of monetary policy or economic outlook would not convey a complete idea. Sound bites cannot be used for items like these: intricate, technocratic issues that do not invoke strong emotion. Greenspan, who is no longer Chairman of the Federal Reserve, can create sound bites, however, when he says things like “when you get this far away from a recession invariably forces build up for the next recession, and indeed we are beginning to see that sign,” as he did on February 25 (“Greenspan”). Immediately, the sound bite potential of Greenspan’s statement was recognized, and networks across the country featured the statement in their newscasts. Sound bites translate into free press for a political figure, are vastly cheaper than producing political advertisements, and are more widely seen and immediate than appearances on television news programs.
Competition amongst politicians and news networks for the top sound bite turns closely watched proceedings—Supreme Court Justice nominee hearings, for example—into less of a governmental process than a political horserace. Genard sees this as a key skill for public officials: “the shrinking space for news rewards the speaker who can capture a key idea in a lively turn of phrase.” Genard also says to “speak in ways that create visual images in listeners’ minds, using simple, concrete language and, where possible, similes, metaphors, and analogies.” With C-SPAN recording every moment of the action in Congress, politicians never definitively step out of the limelight. As Scheuer puts it, “virtually all political actions and communications—not just political ads but also floor speeches by legislators, news conferences, debates, and party conventions—are designed expressly for consumption as sound bites by a TV audience” (29). Because of this, the distinction between interview and non-interview situations is blurred—politicians can speak, via sound bite rhetoric, to newscasts (and ergo, viewers) in similar ways. Now, when politicians are speaking on the record in Congress, they are not speaking to their colleagues or even to C-SPAN viewers as much as they are to newsmen, who are searching for bite-able statements for their newscasts. As Genard explains, television and its viewers prefer “the pithy attack over substantive articulation of position or policy” (Genard). Nonetheless, such attacks cannot be overtly malicious, as “candidates must maintain a positive image and simultaneously engage in the confrontation that shapes public perceptions of leadership” (Whaley and Holloway 298). Candidates must stay “cool” in order to stay aligned with the “cool” television medium and not disenfranchise viewers.
In order to score a sound bite, a speaker usually abandons analysis and argument and pursues showy, slogan-based speech—a “language of sound bites,” if you will. This is reinforced in Gary Genard’s letter on communication strategy to business professionals, titled “The Four Secrets to Delivering the Right Sound Bites”. The four “secrets” are controlling the agenda; using stories, visual images, and personal examples; thinking [in] “headlines”; and being enthusiastic, composed, and confident (Genard). In order to score the headline news story, Genard tells communicators to compress “verbal expression by envisioning your words as a headline.” Scheuer writes that the structure of television news, “by weighing political discourse towards symbols, images, slogans, and sound bites, TV rewards simpler messages” (34). Rhetorical strategies have become more “hook-centric” than information-centric: “whether we are writing or speaking, the more “hooks” we get into our readers or audience members, the less likely they will drift away” (Struck). Sig Mickleson expresses how simply politicians adjusted their rhetorical strategies to accommodate the sound bite:
Candidates developed expertise in formulating colorful 15-second statements that they could drop into answers or questions. In some cases they even bought ‘bites’ from specialists who wrote them for a fee. Broadcast reporters became adept at looking for them. […]Campaign managers and candidates quickly adjusted to the new environment. (Mickleson 61-2)
Sound bites severely weaken genuine extemporaneous speaking in political settings. Improvisation is no longer advisable practice for political figures. Political advisors are hyper-aware of what can go wrong if a politician makes an inflammatory remark, and as a result, politicians and press secretaries are pre-rehearsed on desirable responses to questions that could potentially be posed by reporters or asked in Presidential debates: “Candidates have learned to recite memorized or scripted passages, to display appropriate emotion and act “presidential,” and artfully to avoid discussion of troublesome topics” (Whillock 44). Memos circulate “talking points” so that staffers will all speak in the same rhetorical language without revealing excess information or saying something foolish. Pre-engineered, sound bite-compatible language is less dangerous that speaking freely off the top of one’s head. That way, politicians are less likely to make gaffes or to appear incoherent or domineering. The security of a transcript comforts politicians, and is preferable over press conferences, when the field of questions is open, and a list of answers is not available.
—Technical Elements of the Sound Bite in the Newscast—
Sound Bite and the Interests of Newscasts and Politicians
Sound bites reward both politicians and news broadcasts, as politicians can deliver package-sized synopses of their claims to the public, and news programs can keep their broadcasts fresh, flashy, and visually entertaining. The relationship between politicians and television news (the dynamic within which the sound bite thrives) is symbiotic—both sides have profound needs fulfilled. Scheuer writes “television has granted politicians a conduit for reaching viewing audiences with little or no mediation by journalists” (29). The Reagan Administration, Scheuer writes, “perfected the use of political symbols, and the manipulation of the news media—and especially TV—in using them, in effect turning news stories into free political ads” (79). The cable news networks are very receptive to sound bites, as every bite X seconds long brings them X seconds closer to a commercial break (their source of revenue), and therefore, to the end of their program. These news networks do not wish to report 24 hours of news or produce 24 hours worth of segments each day—that would be far too risky, expensive and laborious. Instead, sound bites are “free time”: free (monetarily) for the politician and nearly free (labor-wise) for the journalist, who merely has to hit “record”.
Sound bites are one of the major reasons 24-hour news networks can exist. Such networks re-run their top programs two or three times in a day, which dramatically reduces the volume of news that needs to be produced. Nonetheless, with re-runs factored in, a given network still needs to produce 12-14 hours of news a day. Although sound bites have grown significantly shorter over time, they are used more frequently than in previous eras and take up a significant portion of newscasts. As has been stated, news stations do not wish to provoke or offend, but aim to provide the viewer with a sense of informativeness while not offending the viewer, other parts of the media, or outside entities, which would entail negative repercussions (possibly including loss of advertising sponsors) for the networks. Sound bites, which are self-proving and do not invoke ire (towards networks), are an essential vehicle for a network getting to 24 hours of news.
On the whole, sound bites are a “safe” form of journalism. One cannot be indicted for plagiarizing a sound bite. Sound bites (unless manipulated, taken severely out of context or embedded within a slanted report) cannot be accused of being unfair or slanderous[14]. The integration of sound bites requires minimal writing on the journalists’ part and can be edited very simply into a news sequence. When used within news reports, sound bites simply “are”: they do not frequently offend or incite anger[15], and if any anger is incited, if any emotion is generated, it is towards the speaker of the sound bite, not the program that delivers it. News programs are largely ratings-driven, and aim to attract the largest audience possible. In non-news settings (talk radio, punditry), the goal may be to gain market share by being overtly partisan, but most television news outlets either keep their agenda implicit or try to appear to be non-partisan and objective. The great dance of reporting is to tell your audience enough so they believe themselves to be “informed”, but not to tell them so much they accuse you of bias, defame you for being indecent, or change loyalties to a competitor. Sound bites are a great tool in achieving this goal.
Sound Bites as Image
The term “sound bite” is somewhat of a misnomer. Sound is only a fraction of the information sound bites have to offer. Images enter the picture as well, and play a large role in contextualizing the words of a rhetor and in giving visual clues to fill in logic or argument-based gaps a brief sound bite could not contain. Such “image bites” have grown increasingly prevalent in television news as sound bites have become shorter in length, becoming unable to speak (through verbal means) for themselves. In fact, “‘Image bites’ now far outnumber the sound bites that have received so much attention” (Barnhurst and Steele 2). Barnhurst and Steele argue that “in a society grown more visual and less verbal, the image takes on political force” (23). Slogans on banners or canvas backgrounds complement a politician’s words, and often stay with the viewer longer than words themselves, especially if the words are not particularly memorable. When George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq in May of 2003, it was the images of the occasion that endured, not the words. In the months after Bush’s speech, as it became apparent that the mission in Iraq was still unfinished, Bush was not criticized for any of the comments he made that day, but for the use of the large “Mission Accomplished” sign hung behind him on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Many people saw the banner as proof that the administration had been negligent in their approach to the war. In his speech, Bush said “the transition from dictator to democracy will take time” and “our coalition will stay until our work is done,” which suggests the Bush Administration was expecting and preparing for a long-term military operation. Yet these words did not save Bush from public outrage, as the press and public focused on the image and message of the “Mission Accomplished” sign (“Bush”). “Pictures overwhelm words,” Jeffery Scheuer writes in Sound Bite Society, “they have a superficial wholeness, an appearance of totality and credibility that makes them harder to erase, revise, or replace with images of the mind’s own conjuring” (111). Politicians must be careful in using images; the backlash against them can be great. On the other hand, the payoff favorable image bites can bring is just as powerful. Ronald Reagan displayed great adeptness at using images to further his personality and political message. One of the most famous images of Reagan is him light-heartedly smiling, dressed in rancher clothing wearing a slightly crooked cowboy hat. The image construed confidence, a sense of humor, “every man”-ness, personality, and fearlessness in leadership like few sound bites plucked out of speeches could.
Sound Bites and the Interview
In his article about the lifting of sound bites from interviews, Mats Nylund sheds light on the practice of turning an interview into a news report. Nylund calls the interview “‘the fundamental act’ of contemporary journalism” (Nylund). Although interviews are a series of questions and answers, they are seldom presented as such on newscasts: “instead, sound-bites from the interviews in combination with other material make up the news stories” (Nylund). A typical method of incorporating sound bites into a report “is by excluding the prior question to which the utterance was usually a reply”. This rearranging is not without consequences: “the practice of quoting can be described as a recontextualization” and, as “the meaning of any new utterance is dependant on the context where it is uttered or presented, a change in context implies also a change in meaning” (Nylund). Interviewees, in granting interviews and speaking on camera, cede control: “when you donate film clips, however, you donate control” (Gitlin 125).
The new meaning of these statements may reflect, in Nylund’s estimation, “the contours of the story narrative,” i.e. the reporters’ preliminary idea of what the news story could or should look like,” not what the interview or investigative fact-finding actually yielded (Nylund). Nylund writes that “the bottom line in news production is to make a narrative that looks like news reporting”. This presents a dilemma for reporters, as often times, “what you want to talk about isn’t there to see” (Barnhurst and Steele 25). In fact, this emphasis on a sense of “news narrative” is so pervasive that it has extended into the realm of personnel evaluation: “So the test of a good TV correspondent was not primarily whether he [sic] was a great political observer. It was whether he could deal with all the technical problems, guide his cameraman towards the right shots, and put the film together to form a coherent story” (25).
Sound bites have given politicians, in certain cases, an extra layer of protection from opponents that they did not have before. If politician A is trying to disprove a sound bite spoken by politician B, the burden of proof rests with politician A. Statements made behind a podium or on the floor of Congress are, in effect, truthful until proven otherwise. This is not so with written statements. It is much more difficult to refute or rebuke a sound bite than a press release or statement (in print). Sound bites are also more personal than written communication: a statement may be printed on John McCain’s letterhead, but it was not uttered by John McCain. When you rebuke a sound bite, you are calling a speaker’s very image and pathos into question. You are not just questioning their words, but also their voice and their credibility.
The use of sound bites has given politicians an easy way to dodge questions in interviews. Often, an interviewer will cue a sound bite and ask their interviewee to “react to” the comments made, or if they agreed with or disagreed with the comments. In these situations, an interviewee can easily shift the subject or avoid the question by saying something to the effect of, “well, earlier in the transcript…” or “a few sentences prior to that…” undermining the premise of the question with another part of the same speech. Politicians accuse newspeople of taking statements “out of context” in order to escape questioning that could do them harm. Of course, although it usually comes across as a sign of desperation, an interviewee can refuse to answer a question outright, and say nothing at all. Lowry and Shilder accurately observe that “interviewers can ask whatever questions they like—there simply isn’t any rule that says you are required to answer those questions” (Lowry and Shilder). This paralyzes an interviewer and leaves them with little choice but to move on to another topic. The fifth amendment of interviewing is alive and well.
—The Economics of the Sound Bite—
Sound Bites and Network Profit
News broadcasts are now more commercialized than ever before, and networks are constantly trying to outdo their competition. Commercialization in newscasting can be defined as any graphics, audio effects, or imagery that does adds nothing to the informativeness of the news, and acts only to entertain the viewer and produce a more attractive product for the television market. The news is meant to entertain nearly as much as, if not as much as, it is meant to inform; and indeed viewers “tend to assume roles of entertainment consumers, rather than of citizens” (Whillock 26). CNN’s The Situation Room provides an example of commercialization and excess that does not improve the quality of information. The studio of The Situation Room features giant screens behind the anchor desk that arc around the room and can be made to display many small images or a few large images in panoramic style. The function of these monitors, according to anchor Wolf Blitzer, is to show viewers “new pictures and information [that] are arriving all the time,” like in the actual situation room in the White House (“Situation”). Unfortunately, and quite obviously, it would be impossible for viewers to take in the images laid out on the panorama of screens unless they were physically in “the situation room” itself. Viewers see not the “new pictures” themselves, but simply that “new pictures are arriving all the time”. The camera is a selective interpretation of events: it chooses what to record, and anything that is not recorded is left out of the final cut. The device of the screens is therefore primarily commercial: it adds nothing to reporting, but much to visual stimulation and entertainment value.
Sound bites, along with dramatic graphics and colorful, animated transitions do not improve the quality or informativeness of news, but act to humor and entertain the viewer: “rather than becoming tools to increase the level of understanding, new technologies are being used as devices for promotional stunts” (Mickleson 107). Sound bites contribute to the entertainment value of a show: they change the camera shot and alter the setting of the narrative, drawing viewers in and keeping them guessing as to what camera feed will come over their screen next. Scheuer writes that “modern television news relies so heavily on the visual nature of television that news reports are often incoherent without their visual elements” (71). Television news cannot settle for merely being radio news with added visuals, it has to titillate and humor like a movie would in order to engage the viewing audience, who is looking to be entertained. The news has become more ratings-centric than info-centric. It is difficult to imagine what our newscasts would be like if they divorced themselves from heavy reliance upon the sound bite. The age of a news anchor reading the news straight into a camera, merely citing (with their own voice) the quotations of others has long since passed:
A decade a two ago, before MTV, the Internet, and other visually rich, fast-moving media shortened everyone’s attention span, people in the news expressed themselves in long thoughts. Not anymore. Media edit like crazy now. (Genard)
Seventeen minutes does not seem like a large amount of content to piece together for a newscast, but newsmen devote significant amounts of airtime to pseudo-informational goings-on that pose as “news.” This raises the question of how newscasts decide what the news will be for that day. What is newsworthy? John B. Bogart once quipped “when a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news” (“New”). Today’s television newscasts, however, regularly highlight stories where dogs bite men. This is one of the television newscast’s greatest tricks: reporting the news by reporting “news”—regularly occurring spectacles and displays of mayhem. Car chases, car crashes, fires, murders, and robberies are chief examples of this. There is very little risk involved in assigning a crew to cover a car crash: roll the camera; get some footage of twisted, burning metal; “interview” (really, harvest sound bites from) a few upset bystanders and a police officer and voila—the lead story of your newscast: “Tremont Street Tragedy”. Events like these take place every day, and are completely normal and predictable (if regrettable) events. What place do these stories have in the news? Cars are still crashing—is the public now informed? In Soundbite Culture, Slayden Whillock writes that it is the culture of “immediacy and superficiality, in which the very notion of ‘news’ erodes in a tide of formulaic mass entertainment” (8). “News executives,” she observes, “have discovered the profitability of cheaply produced, sensational news” (58). It is the bad news—reports of sexual scandal, natural disaster and violent death,” McLuhan writes, “that sells the good news—that is, advertising” (xvi).
The reporting of poll results has overwhelmed short-to-begin-with newscasts, especially those on cable news networks. The reporting of “poll results has become a substitute for substantive coverage of the campaigns” (Whillock 43). As soon as an election is held, polls are immediately carried out so newscasts can report on who is “winning” the next election, which is to be held two years hence. This constant measuring of who is leading in polls takes away time from discussion and analysis-oriented political segments and, “by removing emphasis from issues and putting it squarely on the horse race[…]politics, as a result, becomes a game” (Mickleson 173). Poll results are not sound bites, but the reporting of poll results or discussion of poll results usually provokes language that can be packaged as a sound bite. For instance, if a candidate for the presidential primaries did poorly in a poll, they could respond by saying “The election is a year and a half away. I don’t look at polls. I spend my time and energy looking at solutions for the problems of the American people.” Now a newscast has filled up a significant amount of time: poll results have been reported and a sound bite, which could potentially be rebroadcast later in the day, has been created.
Sound Bite and Network Self-Promotion
Moreover, sound bites are an excellent promotion tool for news programs and news networks themselves. After Vice President Dick Cheney went on NBC’s Meet the Press in September of 2006 to defend the Bush Administration’s claim that there was evidence showing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq (through Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), clips of his statements, were circulated and re-broadcast as a sound bite on newscasts across the globe. When the Cheney clip played (and it is still played, to this day), there was no question of where it came from—and NBC made sure of it. The NBC “peacock” logo sits assuredly in the lower corner, while three large Meet the Press logos grace the studio backdrop. CNN’s Larry King Live’s light bulb world map backdrop has been made famous because of the number of extraordinary “bite-able” statements made in front of it. Every appearance a politician makes on a news program is an opportunity for shows (and their networks) to make news as newsmakers; hence interviewers or anchors will try to coax sound bites out of guests. It is advantageous for networks to stage situations where prime sound bites may be delivered so that the bites may be “harvested” by a particular network and sent out into the news universe, giving a network invaluable visibility in the process. Television consumers, seeing a sound bite from network X, may begin to watch their newscast instead of network Y’s, because that is “where the action is, where the news is made.”
There are also gamesmanship strategies that television programs employ when it comes to this network insignia placement. Networks in the same market may work to put their logo in the same corner of the screen as their competitors, so that the original logo is blocked out by that of the rebroadcaster. Granted, a “courtesy of” announcement is usually placed in the upper part of the screen, but it represents stations with the four-letter identification system (i.e. WHDH), which does not have the same effect as the image of a network logo[16]. Also, the insignia is the universal symbol of the network while the four-letter code varies from market to market.
—Selling Selves, Not Ideas—
The nature of modern-era newscasts has altered the objectives of political campaigns. Studies have found that when choosing between candidates, “people rank the ‘personal qualities’ of political figures over ‘policy preferences’ by four to one” (Whillock 19). Now, instead of defining where candidates stand on the issues, campaigns concern themselves with defining a candidate’s personality. On television, these “personal qualities”—particularly appearance—are more apparent than they are on radio or in print. As a result, “more than ever before, politicians must sell themselves, not their ideas” (Scheuer 34). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when television began to overtake radio as the preferred source of information and news, there were many “casualties of TV,” including the first Presidential campaign of Richard Nixon and the anti-communist crusades of Joseph McCarthy.
The Nixon-Kennedy debates of the 1960 Presidential campaign are a quintessential example of the importance of the political implications of visual appearance and likeability. People who listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon defeated Kennedy, while the majority of the 70 million television viewers of the debate thought Kennedy had won (Allen). This discrepancy can be attributed to the visual appearance of the two candidates. Kennedy was freshly tanned[17] and allowed his aides to apply light makeup to hide imperfections on his visage, and while Kennedy’s performance in the debate was not convincingly presidential, his appearance, “fit as I’ve ever seen him,” as Nixon put it, was. For his part, Nixon had spent two weeks in the hospital in August after injuring his knee and looked wrinkled, clammy, and pale. Nixon refused makeup, which left his perpetual “five o’clock shadow” exposed under the debate’s lighting (Allen). Post-debate polls concluded that voters (most of whom consumed the debate on TV) believed Kennedy won, and he went on to win the election.
Marshall McLuhan characterizes television as a “cool medium.” As such, when consuming television, viewers require feeling as though they are participating interactively in the information process. “In closed-circuit instruction of surgery,” McLuhan writes, “medical students from the first reported a strange effect—that they seemed not to be watching an operation, but performing it. They felt that they were holding the scalpel” (328). McLuhan continues to say that “the cool TV medium cannot abide the typical because it leaves the viewer frustrated of his job of ‘closure’ or completion of image” (331). Nixon’s demeanor, “typical” and easily classifiable, deprived TV viewers of this chance: “when the person presented looks classifiable, as Nixon did, the TV viewer has nothing to fill in. [The viewer] feels uncomfortable with his TV image. He says uneasily, ‘There’s something about the guy that isn’t right’” (330). McLuhan concludes that Nixon would have decisively won the election if television had not been such a major factor, and that “TV would inevitably be a disaster for a sharp intense image like Nixon’s, and a boon for the blurry, shaggy texture of Kennedy” (329). Writing on Senator McCarthy, McLuhan observes “it was no accident that [he] lasted such a very short time when he switched to TV […] TV is a cool medium. It rejects hot figures and hot issues and people from the hot press media” (299). Television, in its very nature, rejects the “hot”, thus shaping the content that is shown on the airwaves. Although his fall from grace had already begun, television accelerated Joseph McCarthy’s demise. When depicted on TV, McCarthy was no longer a story.
—Sound bites beyond the script: gaffes—
Many sound bites capture mistakes made by politicians, and spread against their desires. Such sound bites start genuine controversies or, just as often, controversies conjured up and driven by the media. Senator Joe Biden’s recent remarks about fellow Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama illustrate this. Biden called Obama “articulate and bright and clean” and the first black candidate to be running from the mainstream of his/her political party. Senator Obama did not draw attention to Biden’s remarks, and quietly dismissed them as being foolish, but not racist (“Biden’s”). Biden has a history of such ill-advised slips. As Michael Kinsley of Time Magazine quipped, Biden “is pathologically loquacious. And he babbles. That means his unintended comments about black presidential candidates deserve less weight, not more” (Kinsley). Despite this, the television media swarmed on the story, staging days of coverage during which they brought in multiple social commentators to speak on race relations in America and to ask if Senator Biden was a racist (“Biden’s”). Many demanded Biden withdraw his Presidential bid (which he launched the same day he made the Obama remarks). The sound bite of Biden’s words was played ad nauseam throughout the entire ordeal. When commenting on Biden’s chances of winning the Democratic Nomination, analysts still evoke the Obama comments, calling the comments a large obstacle to Biden’s chances.
—Conclusion—
Lengthier sound bites cannot be seen as a magic bullet to reverse the troubled state of television news, but they are a large step in the right direction, and a step away from the fragmented, rapid-fire nature of narrative-centered news. A return to 43-second-long excerpts will not magically produce an informed electorate. Russomanno wrote that “assumptions that the political process is better served by unfiltered, unedited, lengthy sound bites may be erroneous”. Longer sound bites will, however, give viewers a chance to rediscover their abilities to consume and analyze larger portions of political rhetoric. News will always be a reduced, compacted reproduction of real events: “TV, like other media, does not deliver experience itself. Rather, it provides an encoded simulacrum that we generically call information” (Scheuer 63). Regrettably, news stations must run advertisements, and they must compete with their peers, which results in a ratings obsession that deprives the content quality of news. In a half-hour news program, the challenge of fitting in the actual news is always at the forefront: “after you subtract commercials, weather, sports, good evening and good-bye, a 30-minute local TV newscast is only about 17 minutes of news” (Jones). Can the world be reduced to 17 minutes? No. But newsmen try, and viewers buy into it: “having naturalized television, we routinely ignore the differences between direct and viewed experience despite their obvious dissimilarities (Scheuer 102).
Sound biting in some form is necessary and essential. In a perfect world, consumers would to go back to a speech or statement itself to gain information, but expecting consumers to re-view the entirety of a State of The Union Address over their morning coffee is irrational and unrealistic. Nonetheless, networks must make the effort to augment their short “bited” clips into longer excerpts from which a viewing audience can observe and interpret political rhetoric first-hand. The public’s ability to interpret political rhetoric has weakened not because they are incapable of doing do, but because their interpretation abilities have atrophied after being deprived of the chance. Television—including news—is not the real. Degrees of separation will always exist between what is happening, what is observed, what is reported and what is received on the other side of the screen. The goal of television news should not be to eliminate these degrees of separation (such would be impossible), but to diminish them as much as they can. Sound bites exacerbate these degrees of separation, and have greatly influenced political rhetoric and audience perception as well. Enough is enough. It is now time for sound bites, like flash bulb cameras and the carbon microphone, to retire into obsolescence.
[1] Such stories may be used as segues to discuss funding for firefighters or laws involving auto insurance, but the events—the fires and the crashes—were accidental and were not borne of political motivation.
[2] As far as the medium of television (or any medium) can represent “fact.”
[3] Used loosely in this paper, meaning not just public officials but also those aiming to persuade.
[4] Networks, when not qualified by another term, refers to all television news outlets. In this paper, “cable stations” will refer to CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. “Broadcast networks” will refer to ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox National.
[5] Selected to be rebroadcast as part of a newscast.
[6] While sound bites are used in television newscasts despite the inevitable loss of surrounding situational context, they are used in political advertising because of their loss of context. For all intents and purposes, the shorter the bite, and the weaker the context, the more readily a politician’s words can be manipulated. This is why sound bites in political advertising may only be a few seconds long.
[7] This brings up the question of if sound bites can be spoken in a foreign language. For example, if a Japanese diplomat made a statement that fulfilled the other sound bite parameters, would the clip be considered a voiceover or a sound bite? If the person delivering the translated words is not the main reporter of the piece, the clip is a sound bite, as the change of voice shifts the setting of the narrative and draws in the viewer. If the same reporter reads the translation, however, it is not a sound bite, as the setting of the narrative is shifted in the visual dimension only.
[8] “With the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself” (McLuhan 43).
[9] The presentation of this concept in this paper is not meant to belittle the importance of content compared to medium, but to acknowledge that television, as a medium, creates a starting point from which all analyses must begin.
[10] These clips were often multi-topical, which violates the parameters of our sound bite definition. Also, these lengthier clips were not memorable (in the sense that the length of the clips made it extremely difficult for viewers to sing-songedly regurgitate their wording) like the shorter bites of today. These were a step above sound bites—and were sound courses and sound meals. For our purposes, they will be called excerpts.
[11] Although original technology was bulky, expensive, and inconvenient. In the 1970s and 80s cheaper and more practical models were developed, and 99% of today’s televisions are sold with a remote control.
[12] An employee for WHDH-TV (Boston’s NBC affiliate) explains that the colors of their newsroom are designed to appeal to a younger audience, while the colors of WCVB (Boston’s ABC affiliate) are meant to attract older viewers.
[13] It should be noted that these shows are not presented as news per sé, but as debate programs. The shows, however, share subject matter with the news, and many viewers use shows like these as their news source.
[14] There have been many accusations that the television media does not give “equal time” to negative and positive bites made by politicians and of “biting” some politicians more than others. There have also been allegations of favoritism between the political parties because of the frequency or favorability of bites that represent their members. This can be controversial and offensive to the networks’ interests and must be kept in mind.
[15] When sound bites are used in political advertising, their very function is to incite anger or outrage against a politician. This is also evident in partisan punditry and The Daily Show-style programs where people are trying to catch a politician at their worst.
[16] Such is equivalent to seeing the word “Nike” instead of the iconic “swoosh” logo.
[17] Kennedy had been campaigning in California in early September. It has been theorized John Kerry tried to re-capture JFK’s tanned look during the Presidential campaign of 2004. At the end of September, before the first Presidential debate, Kerry evidently used a self-tanning agent, which gave his skin an overwhelmingly unnatural orange-hue (Catton). Kerry’s skin tone was most widely discussed as fodder for conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and was not focused on by the news media, but surely Kerry’s appearance did not slip past viewers.
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