Actually, Sarah Palin never said that, Tina Fey did in a parody of Palin on Saturday Night Live. But that didn’t stop some people from believing that she did, and consequently judging her.
“Sound bites” are a journalistic mechanism usually used to boil down one’s point to...nothing. Prior to the Television- and Internet-era that current generations fail to see past, there was once a time when people got their news from the radio. With the switch from radio to television broadcasting in the 1950’s, news networks began to realize that this change in format would have profound effects upon viewers. For instance, the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon showed a clear shift in perception between viewers and listeners. The story goes that Richard Nixon was sick and sweaty. Citizens who watched the debate collectively thought that Kennedy had won, yet those who listened to the debate on the radio thought that Nixon won. It appeared that Kennedy’s calm and composed demeanor on screen influenced the way the public selected a winner.
Kennedy himself acknowledged that his victory was a result of the medium, stating “it was the T.V. more than anything else that turned the tide.” Interestingly enough, it was not for another 16 years that a televised presidential debate appeared again. Why? Because image is powerful, and power can be scary. It was the same case with this year’s presidential debate where Candy Crowley was made moderator. The last female to moderate a presidential debate before Crowley was more than twenty years ago. Change things up, and people get scared.
From our vantage point, the first televised debate appears absurdly dated. With the advancements in technology over the last few decades, a politician’s image has changed from being irrelevant to crucial. However, a more subtle change has been the media’s representation of political figures, and ultimately this shift has been much more important. With pressing deadlines and a never-ending race to get a story published first, the journalistic field has forced anyone with an opinion to condense their thoughts into ten-second time slots. However, bite-size isn’t always effective.
Some argue that the beginning of sound bites appeared in 1908, when presidential candidates recorded their voices and released the audio to the public for the first time.Yet, many agree that 1988 seems to be the turning point for sound bites, when research was released that found a huge decrease in the size of sound bites in the media. “Sound Bite Democracy,” an article written in 1992 by Daniel C. Hallin, he sates “in 1968 the average sound bite for candidates and other ‘elites’ was 48.9 seconds...by 1988 the elites were allowed only 8.9 seconds.” That means that within two decades, the average time allotted for a sound bite from an ‘elite’ figure in society diminished by 40 seconds. So, what was once explained in a thorough, detailed paragraph, must now be explained in a catchy, one-liner that hopes to capture the same essence of the speaker’s intended thoughts. However, quantity is not equal to quality. Surely, “binders full of women,” does not capture the essence of what Mitt Romney was trying to say this election season.
When Ronald Reagan said “tear down this wall” in 1987, sound bites had already reached an all-time-low. Perhaps Reagan even had a hand in contributing to these statistics, since he was “famous for his ability to use short, pithy phrases that seem to sum up more complex ideas.” (The Millennials: Why Companies are Losing Billions in Turnover to this Generation - and What to Do About It by Joanne Sujansky and Jan Ferri-Reed) Besides, who is more quoted in the news than the President of the United States? Yet, many of his ideas could be communicated in short phrases which proved to develop his own style of political discourse.
Yes, Reagan could clearly and powerfully portray his thoughts here in just four words. However, many politicians today cannot. President Obama is often described as someone who talks slowly. C.N.N. attributed Obama’s longer speaking time to the president’s style of speech in this year’s final presidential debate. For a total of three and a half minutes longer, Obama did indeed speak longer, but Romney talked more, over 400 words more.
The public has been taught to receive their information in short snippets. With both news networks feeding sound bite after sound bite through stories, and social media like Twitter condensing “updates” into 140 characters or less, we have become conditioned to the sound-bite lifestyle. We are so trained to look for a sound bite within anyone’s speech that we don’t even listen to what he or she is actually saying. There are a multitude of YouTube videos available to watch which set political quotes to music in order to mock the speakers. A recent one makes Obama’s statement, “you didn’t build that” into a rap song. In addition, political memes can go viral within hours. Horses and bayonets, anyone? We laugh at these parodies, but usually don’t even understand their true meaning.
Often times, these sound bites that the public latches on to are taken out of context. For example, in this year’s election, a political ad by Mitt Romney quoted President Obama as stating “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” However, this quote was taken out of context from the 2008 election, where it is clear that Obama’s whole quote changes the meaning drastically: “John McCain knows his economic theories don’t work. That’s why his campaign said that if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Just as people watch specific news networks which ascribe to their own political views, citizens don’t usually search for context or truth. They are searching for something to reinforce their own prior beliefs, whether that statement is out of context or not. It is the same mentality that political ad-makers use.
Debates shine a bright light on a culture that is constantly being timed. During this year’s first presidential debate, the candidates were allotted two minutes to answer each question, with the moderator in place to equally divide this speaking time. Some argue that a long-winded answer is not necessarily a good answer, which is certainly true for some candidates. Perhaps this avoids a rambling, nonsensical politician, but it can also diminish the quality of the answers that the public receives. How are we supposed to accept two-minute responses, from staggered candidates, in order to form a clear understanding of what a candidate believes? Issues of foreign and domestic policy cannot be boiled down to two minutes, especially not in a debate setting where each candidate is both expressing and defending his or her belief or plan at the same time.
The media is to blame. As Michael Dukakis put it, in 1988, “If you couldn’t say it in less than 10 seconds, it wasn’t heard because it wasn’t aired.” News networks simply accept that they only have certain time limits to comment on certain pieces of news, and in turn the message conveyed to the public is simply good enough. Social media and advertisements bombard us with quick, quotable, and sufficient phrases each day. The busy individuals that we are, we willingly accept these mediocre catch phrases because they are satisfying; there is no pause, there is no stoppage, and there is little absorption. So,why should we settle for more?
