History
In the 1960s and 1970s, pressure from advertisers on the American television industry to create entertaining news material made sound bites central to political coverage. Politicians began to use PR techniques to craft self-images and slogans that would resonate with the television-viewing audience and ensure their victory in campaigns. The term "sound bite" was coined in the 1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was famous for short, memorable phrases like, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" in reference to the increasing social demand to remove the Berlin Wall.
During the 1988 United States presidential election, candidate Michael Dukakis highlighted the prominent role of sound bites and spin doctors in political campaigns by running a commercial that mocked contender George H.W. Bush's handlers' frustration over the gaffes of his vice presidential running-mate Dan Quayle.
Read more about this topic: Sound Bite
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)