{"id":4435,"date":"2008-05-17T12:39:02","date_gmt":"2008-05-17T19:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/17\/the-sound-bite-society\/"},"modified":"2008-05-17T12:39:02","modified_gmt":"2008-05-17T19:58:50","slug":"the-sound-bite-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4435","title":{"rendered":"The Sound Bite Society"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More reason for despair, from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjr.org\/the_research_report\/getting_bit.php\">Columbia Journalism Review<\/a> (and via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/csnc\/blogs\/ezraklein_archive?month=05&#038;year=2008&#038;base_name=newz_u_cant_uze\">Ezra<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Anyone who buys the beltway complaint that television news reporting shrivels both politics and public discourse has two new reasons to worry: sound bites are getting shorter and video reels are getting longer. That means less talk of policy solutions and more rolling shots of diplomatic handshakes, tarmac striding, and presidential cowboys whacking underbrush on Texas ranches. In the <em>Journal of Communication\u2019s<\/em> winter issue, Indiana University professors Erik Bucy and Maria Grabe update a landmark 1992 study, which found that clips of presidential candidates speaking between 1968 and 1992 had dramatically shrunk from an average of one minute to under ten seconds each. Since 1992, say Bucy and Grabe, sound bites have been further compressed into eight-second nibbles. Meanwhile, B-roll of candidates has expanded, and image bites (no words from the candidates) now take up more airtime than sound bites in campaign coverage.<\/p>\n<p>But do the details of the findings offer any hope? Are sound bites, though shorter, more numerous? Nope. Denser with policy content? Afraid not. Shrinking in proportion to the length of news stories? On the contrary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What isn&#8217;t pointed out, however, is that the web may counteract this to a small degree; consumers with (the money to pay for) fast web connections can watch all the long speeches they want on Youtube. Nonetheless, a huge portion of the public is still getting most of their news from TV, and they&#8217;re being poorly served.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More reason for despair, from the Columbia Journalism Review (and via Ezra): Anyone who buys the beltway complaint that television news reporting shrivels both politics and public discourse has two new reasons to worry: sound bites are getting shorter and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4435\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics","category-media-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}