Actuality

An actuality is an audiotape recording of a human news source that is intended to be played as an integral part of a news story prepared for broadcast in an electronic medium. The term is often used interchangeably with bite (or sound bite), although purists among media workers consider the two terms distinct in their definitions and proper use. Specifically, the second edition of the Broadcast News Writing Stylebook (2002, p. 93) notes that actuality is a radio term whereas bite is a television term. Of course, the latter would include video.

Nevertheless, those in radio today commonly use the term sound bite, so any subtle distinction may be lost on many electronic media news people. Common usage in television coverage of politics also seems to have popularized the term sound bite among the lay public, whereas actuality seems to be a term that is used and understood mostly among media workers.

Both actuality and bite (sound bite) describe the actual sound of someone talking as a part of a news narrative, for example, the recorded speech of a source from the public relations practitioner's organization who is a newsmaker or who is being used as a secondary source for a news story. An actuality is analogous, indeed equivalent, to a direct quote in print media and thus adds credibility and interest; furthermore, a colorfully expressed actuality often provides a unique—and highly effective—means to emphatically express a fact or point of view.

An actuality may be part of a story narrative that is being prepared by an electronic media journalist to be aired on a newscast, but such recording of an actuality often is included in a media release being prepared by the public relations practitioner for a news release to be submitted to electronic media as an information subsidy for broadcast news programs.

Actualities or bites are to be differentiated, nevertheless, from natural sound, background sound, ambient sound, and other types of sound that may be used as background under the voice track of a reporter or news source. Such background sounds can give the listening/viewing audience a sense [Page 10]of being at the news site but do not include recognizable, or at least primarily important, speech.

The public relations practitioner must use caution in preparing and coaching her or his organization's people in acting as sources for actualities, whether the actuality is being produced by the public relations practitioner to be included in a news release to electronic media, whether the source is a speaker at a news conference being hosted by the practitioner's organization, or whether the source is simply participating in an unexpected interview sought by an electronic media news reporter because the representative is a credible or important source for news that involves the practitioner's organization.

If the public relations practitioner produces the actuality, the utmost care must be taken to exercise technical excellence in recording the spoken words. Poor technical quality may prevent an actuality that accompanies a news release from being used by electronic media or, at best, will detract from the message that the source is trying to convey.

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