Sound bytes
Nov 2nd, 2007 by Bethany
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Last night I saw about a half an hour of Charlie Rose interviewing Mike Huckabee, a presidential candidate from Arkansas. Although I didn't agree with everything he said, I was impressed with how well he handled the questions Charlie Rose threw at him. He was generally very calm and prepared and expressed himself smoothly with little hesitation. I thought it was especially impressive because Charlie Rose was asking some hard questions in a rather combative way–it looked like he was trying to trip Mr. Huckabee up and get him to say something he didn't want to.
In all fairness to Mr. Rose, I'm sure he believes it's his job to push hardened political veterans to tell the truth and say something controversial that differentiates them from the pack. He probably believes it's also his job to make "good TV" by finding something sensational or crazy about the people he interviews; to make news on his show. He spoke respectfully and calmly with Mr. Huckabee and I would say he wasn't at all mean.
In college I took a class called "International Communications" where one of the things we discussed pretty extensively was how the media (especially news media) effects how we see the world. One of the points that struck home enough for me to remember it six years later because the topic has come to mind pretty often is this: the largest source of political (and a lot of other) information for the masses is TV and radio news, which has limited time resources and an agenda to keep their audience interested. This leads to complex issues being debated, discussed, and publicized primarily in short sound bytes that often simply cannot give the audience sufficient information or perspective to form reasonable opinions.
For example, say I'm a trainer of Olympic ice skaters and one of my trainees just won a gold medal doing a routine choreographed by a dancer I'd hired and practicing using a special exercise method I created with music a professional colleague mixed together. A reporter interviews me, and he has one minute of air time to ask me two or more questions and get my answers. First, the reporter asks "How did you help your trainee to get the gold medal?" Of course, I won't be able to give an answer that's valuable to anyone who really wants to help someone get a gold medal. More likely, one of the best things I could say in the time allotted is "We had a great team of people who helped us with everything from choreography to music." Say the reporter then asks "How did you go about choosing the music you won with?" In actuality, it was a complicated process involving a professional who narrowed down the music selection based on the pace required and other objective measurements, then the skater listened to the selections and narrowed it down further by emotional and physical response to the music, then I chose one or more selections and then sent the music to be mixed to the correct length for the routine, etc. I wouldn't be able to explain the process in a valuable way to someone sincerely asking the question in the few seconds allotted, so it would probably be best to say something like "My medalist heard the music and loved it and we thought it would get a great response form the judges and audience."
That's a long example, but my point is that sound bytes are not a good medium for learning anything with any complexity. Watching Charlie Rose's interview of Mike Huckabee last night reminded me that political issues are complex, that news shows are interested in sensational sound bytes and "news," and mixing the two in order to make political decisions is a recipe for a mess. Mr. Rose was asking questions like "how would you improve our education system" and "are you a spender and a tax raiser" and expecting one or two minute answers that were honest, complete answers that would help voters make decisions. There were multiple times that I saw Mr. Huckabee scrunch his eyebrows, seemingly trying to decide how much to explain his answer to a question and how much to give a "we have a great team" kind of throwaway answer to avoid being cut off in the middle of a complete explanation.
While I was watching the interview, Colin came in and said that he's not sure how much he wants presidential candidates to have answers to every one of the reporter's questions. He said that when a reporter asks an in-depth question about what a candidate would do about a complicated subject, he wants the candidate to say something like "I'd check with my expert advisers on the subject and go from there." How in the world can we expect one person to be expert on every subject from biological research (i.e. stem cells) to diplomacy to public relations to the education system to civil engineering (i.e. roads and bridges) to economics?
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and we expect our leaders to make huge decisions based on a little knowledge and we expect to be able to make decisions about who those leaders should be based on sound bytes. I'd really like to sit down with each candidate one on one for a few hours each and have them explain what they know and what they want without the threat of me clipping out a couple of controversial seconds of the conversation and playing it to all of my friends and theirs. That's the only way I can think of to really get educated about candidates and make a good voting decision.
Sadly, I don't know how any candidate could conduct a national campaign on anything but sound bytes. There are simply too many people to visit with and too little time. I guess the next best thing is for me to read their watered-down web pages and watch the news and see if there are deal-breaker bytes for me to vote down.
