Sound Bite

Sound bite is a term most often used by television journalists, although radio journalists use the term clip in the same way. A bite is one of the staple elements of electronic journalists who face increasing pressure to present their stories in a very limited amount of time. Electronic journalists are rarely allotted the time inside a newscast to include an entire recorded interview, thus they select parts or pieces of the interview and edit them into their reports as sound bites. One collegelevel electronic journalism textbook describes the process this way: “Once the sounds bites have been selected, the story should begin to fall into place around them.” The idea behind this selection is to choose a sound bite that clearly and succinctly conveys ...