sound bite

A sound bite is a piece of what someone said, about ten seconds worth, that is presented on television or radio news. It has 20 words or less out of the hundreds or thousands that were spoken. A sound bite, however, is supposed to catch the heart of it.

Those in high office – presidents, ministers, senators and others – know this, of course. So they pitch what they say in public to give news reporters the sound bite they need, like throwing a dog a bone.

A good sound bite can stand on its own apart from the speech or comment that it came from. It should sum up one’s message in a striking way that bears repeating – not just one night on the evening news, but in the days that follow among the public.

President Reagan was a master of the art. His most famous sound bite was “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, speaking of the Berlin Wall and all that it stood for.

John Kerry, who ran for president in 2004, was said to have lost in part because he could not put his message into sound bites.

Kerry and his supporters will say that the great policy questions are not that simple. And so they are not. But to lead a democracy you must be able to get your message across.

Even before television and sound bites, great speakers like Churchill and William Jennings Bryant understood they needed a line or two in the speech that would be repeated and carry its message long after the speech was delivered.

Advertisements are much longer than sound bites, but even they try to pack their message into one line that will stick in people’s minds.

So the sound bite is not some evil practice cooked up by television news: it is necessary for anyone who wants to get his message across to millions of people.

Jeffrey Scheuer in his book “The Sound Bite Society” argues that sound bites favour the right over the left: the right’s message is simple enough for sound bites, the left’s message is not. Thus Kerry’s trouble with sound bites.

Scheuer has half a point: the great danger of sound bites is in making policy debate in a democracy too simple-minded. But the American left’s trouble with sound bites is not so much that they refuse to make their message simple-minded, as that they have no clear message to begin with. Once they have have a clear message and a leader to deliver it, the sound bites will take care of themselves.

A sound bite, properly used, is not an end but a beginning. As in advertising, it is the heart of your message, but one on which you build and give meaning to with each new ad or, for would-be presidents, with each new speech or debate. It is not the death of thought but a door into it.

See also:

• television
• democracy
• Churchill
• advertisement
• America