Speaking in Soundbites
Unless you’re a uni student or work for MyMedia I think it’s safe to assume you don’t have time to watch the daily press conferences on ABCNews24. However, if you do you might like to play the game ‘pick the soundbite’.
It’s easy, just listen to the rambling politician, union rep, CEO and try to guess what 10 seconds of gold will be used to shape the nightly news story. If the person speaking knows what they’re doing, they can literally dictate what the story will be through their soundbite.
Sound bites have been present in news reporting since the 1970’s, originating in the United States after pressure by advertisers to condense the news of the day into easily consumable ‘bite-sized’ pieces that could fit neatly around the products they were spruiking. To begin with the average soundbite was 40 seconds in length but by 1980 it was 18 seconds. At the end of the 80’s the average soundbite was 7 – 9 seconds, which is where it has stayed.
Training in how to give sound bites (and media training in general) is now big business, with ex-journos promising would be clients that they’ll teach them how to manipulate the news cycle. Its enough to make a news consumer feel a bit jaded that they’re only getting highly polished and packaged spin. It’s also an ethical concern for journalists as soundbites can easily misrepresent a story and we’ve all heard the cry ‘that quote was taken out of context’.
For the most part an orchestrated press conference is a pretty dry affair peppered with enough fodder to satisfy the nightly news demands but it’s a glorious thing indeed when a sound bite happens organically and becomes part of the cultural fabric of a country, here are a few pearlers from some of our past politicians, these are the sound bites that have the power to transport you back to a time and place in Australian history.
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not.” – Prime Minister Julia Gillard to then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. This soundbite was the beginning of her now infamous ‘misogyny speech’ on the 9th of October 2012. It is said to have defined her time as Prime Minster and afterwards the Macquarie dictionary even changed their definition of the word ‘misogyny’ from ‘hatred of women’ to ‘entrenched prejudice against women’.
“We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” – Prime Minister John Howard in his 2001 Federal election speech after the Tampa affair. The policy still stands, asylum-seekers arriving by boat to Australia will not be granted refugee status with many current politicians still referring to this soundbite when justifying the policy.
Finally, one that is far less serious than the previous two, one that is truly organic, our larrikin Prime Minster, the honourable Bob Hawke in 1983 after Australia II won the America’s Cup “Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum” … you can hear his voice, you can even smell the cigarette smoke and cans of beer. If only all soundbites were this evocative.