The current model of politics by soundbyte is stifling real debate.

Well it’s changed enormously. I mean television was already the dominant factor when I came in, but . . . in 1960. But there was a real sort of balance between print and television at that point. On the campaign buses, the print reporters still sat up front and the television people sat in the back of the bus. That changed pretty quickly. And now of course with cable, both networks and the print are in the back seat and cable is driving the bus. It’s a problem that is a kind of an artifact of the . . . I think mostly the television role as the dominant channel of communication for politicians. What the politicians learned was that if they maintained the old-fashioned way of campaigning – set speeches, complex talks on foreign policy, or foreign policy or economic policy – that reporters had wide range as to what they chose to report from those speeches. But if they framed their message each day in a single sound bite, particularly if they could do it in front of a dramatic setting – a closed steel mill or a polluted stream – that became the message for the television coverage. And so with television, what you had essentially was a shrinkage of the daily message from the campaigns to that sound bite level. Recorded on: 9/13/07