Sound Bite - Impact

Impact

In his book The sound bite society, Jeffrey Scheuer argues that the sound bite was the product of television's increased power over all forms of communication, and that the resulting trend toward short, catchy snippets of information had a significant negative impact on American political discourse. In contrast, Peggy Noonan feels that sound bites have acquired a negative connotation but are not inherently negative, and that what we now think of as great historical sound bites—such as "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", the most famous phrase in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Inaugural Address—were examples of eloquent speakers unselfconsciously and "simply trying in words to capture the essence of the thought they wished to communicate."

The increased use of sound bites in news media has been criticized, and has led to discussions on journalistic and media ethics. According to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, journalists should "make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context."

Despite this criticism, sound bites are widely employed by businesses, trade groups, labor unions and politicians. Senator Jim DeMint readily admitted this when he said, "There’s a reason why most politicians talk in sanitized sound bites: Once you get out of that, you’re opening yourself up to get attacked."