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Interview bites” in television news production and presentation

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DOI: 10.1080/17512781003711348

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“INTERVIEW BITES” IN TELEVISION NEWS PRODUCTION AND PRESENTATION

Åsa Kroon Lundell; Mats Ekström First published on: 03 November 2010 To cite this Article Kroon Lundell, Åsa and Ekström, Mats(2010) '“INTERVIEW BITES” IN TELEVISION NEWS

PRODUCTION AND PRESENTATION', Journalism Practice, 4: 4, 476 — 491, First published on: 03 November 2010 (iFirst)

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17512781003711348 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512781003711348

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• r indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS PRODUCTION AND PRESENTATION

A ˚ sa Kroon Lundell and Mats Ekstro ¨m

This study focuses on how interviewees’ utterances are used as resources in news production

• processes. We examine how these communicative units, here labelled ‘‘interview bites’’, are

integrated in every major aspect of the news production process as well as in the presentation of news reports. Basically, we argue that an interview bite operates in three distinct ways, as (1) a format, (2) a mental representation, and (3) an artefact. Although we claim that it has these different functions, the three dimensions interact and collectively work as powerful motivations for the choices made by reporters throughout the news production process. The data are gathered from field observations of Swedish reporters’ work at a major news desk and from in-depth reporter interviews. Theoretically, the study re-visits Clayman’s (1995) considerations for enhancing quotability: narrative relevance, conspicuousness and extractability. While maintaining these three basic cornerstones of what makes certain statements quote-worthy, a re-definition of the rationale behind each consideration is needed in order to make them relevant for our understanding of everyday news production practices. KEYWORDS broadcast; interview; interview bite; news; quotes; sound bite

Introduction

A good deal of a reporter’s daily news work is oriented towards researching for suitable interviewees, collecting voices on tape and editing them for use in recorded news reports (Ekstro ¨m and Kroon Lundell, forthcoming). This paper focuses on recorded (or to-be- recorded) interview replies*here labelled ‘‘interview bites’’*and how they are used as communicative resources in television news reports. We want to examine how the management of interview bites are integrated in every major aspect of the news production

• process. We believe this ambition calls for a multi-methodological mix (combining
• bservations, interviews and textual analyses), an approach which sets our study apart

from other studies on broadcast ‘‘quoting practices’’ (although see Nylund, 2006). In research, short answers inserted into broadcast news reports are in general included in the established concept ‘‘sound bite’’. Just as the interview is seen as ‘‘the fundamental act of contemporary journalism’’ (Schudson, 1994, p. 565), sound bites have, since Hallin’s (1992) much cited study, been identified as fundamental in, and for, broadcast news stories (Ekstro ¨m, 2001; Eriksson, 2006). They have also been thought of as characteristic of an interventionist kind of journalism (Blumler and Gurevitch, 2001). This means that the use of sound bites implies a more independent journalistic positioning in relation to sources’ voices. Statements, along with a mixture of voices, are used as raw material in the construction of what is essentially the reporter’s own story (Hallin, 1992; cf. Eriksson, 2006, and in press; Nylund, 2003a). However, sound bites do not necessarily derive from interviews but may be collected from a variety of contexts. In our study, we Journalism Practice, Vol. 4, No 4, 2010, 476491

ISSN 1751-2786 print/1751-2794 online – 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17512781003711348

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exclusively examine how interview utterances, what we choose to call ‘‘interview bites’’, are managed in television news production. Apart from tracing the use of interview bites and how these practices influence the processes of news production, our study sets itself apart from others by analysing the management of interview answers from an everyday news production perspective. With the use of observations of, and interviews with, working reporters throughout the production of news reports, we capture the entire process of producing, selecting and presenting answers from various interviewees for Aktuellt, a major Swedish news

• programme. By also conducting in-depth interviews with reporters at the news desk

during a two-week field study, we gathered a rich empirical ground on which to discuss the practice of quoting from interviews in broadcast news. The ways in which journalistic practices are ‘‘interview bite-oriented’’ will be illustrated by presenting one news report and its materialisation from beginning to end with a special focus on how interview bites are managed throughout its production. In analogy with Fairclough (1995, p. 50), we believe there is a need to ‘‘analyse news production as transformations across chained communicative events’’. In addition, as we draw our conclusions, we will re-visit Clayman’s (1995) three basic considerations behind journalists’ selection of quotations and sound bites; narrative relevance, conspicuousness and extractability. In contrast to Clayman, we examine the production, selection and presentation of everyday quotes (i.e. interview bites) rather than extraordinary ‘‘defining moments’’ extracted from important political events. Given our focus on the everyday journalistic production of news stories based around the practice of interviewing, we believe it justifiable to propose an adjustment of the rationale behind each one of the three identified considerations while still maintaining their relevance as

• verarching conceptual categories.

Theory and Literature

In the early 1990s, Bell (1991, p. 210) stated that ‘‘how an interview becomes a news story still needs investigation’’. We believe that this is still a relevant area of research as there is much to learn about news selection processes in general, and more specifically, about the meanings that are ascribed to these processes by the practitioners themselves. Broadly speaking, our study links into classic newsroom work conducted by Tuchman (1978), Gans (1979), Fishman (1980) and others in the same tradition who have emphasised the cultural and social constructionist aspects of news making. However, we will narrow our theoretical frame to research dealing with the representation of sources’ utterances in different media. When examining the use of interview bites and their representations, the conceptualisations vary depending on the kind of media in which they are reproduced. In the press, both media scholars and journalists speak of quotes from sources, often from

• interviews. Quotes are used for confirmation, evaluation, criticism and to enhance a sense
• f presence (Ekstro

¨m, 2006; Nylund, 2003a). They lend legitimacy to a story or make it possible for the reporter to distance herself from what, for example, might appear to be a provocative statement (Tuchman, 1978, p. 96). Quotations make a story come alive. ‘‘They can capture personality and reveal inner feelings. They generate emotion. They let the journalist ‘show’ rather than tell’’ (Martin, 2007, p. 5). ‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS 477

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A number of media scholars have examined how quotes operate in media discourse from a range of perspectives (see, for instance, Bell, 1991; Caldas-Coulthard, 1993, 1994; Fairclough, 1992, 1995; Scollon, 1998; van Dijk, 1988). It has been argued that quotes allow journalists to uphold objectivity, legitimacy and authority (Tuchman, 1978; Zelizer, 1989) or that the ways that quotes are used make the distinction between the reported voice (i.e. the quoted party) and the reporter’s voice difficult to distinguish (Calsamiglia and Ferrero, 2003; Tannen, 1989). That quoting is indeed a fundamental practice for journalism is underlined by the many textbooks that deal with the art of quoting (Gibson and Hester, 2000). In journals and magazines oriented towards the journalistic profession, reporters advise their peers and warn them not to use repetitive sources and flat quotes which add no meaning. Some quibble about whether it is best to use direct quotations or whether to paraphrase (LaRocque, 2008). Simultaneously, some politicians are said to look nostalgically back to the times when journalists actually asked them in-depth questions about topics of real substance while, ‘‘now it’s give me a quote’’ (Johnston, 2004, p. 97). Sound bites are described by Howell (1998, p. 611) as television news’ equivalent to newspaper quotes, and it is ‘‘a short portion of an interview, speech, or statement edited with video of the story’’. Similarly, Bucy and Grabe (2007, p. 660) define a sound bite as ‘‘a piece of audio at least in part matching accompanying video of a candidate talking’’, narrowing it down to political utterances. Sound bites, then, do not necessarily constitute answers from interviews but are included in this category. The vast majority of sound bite research is based on political coverage, often specifically focused on campaign coverage. Lowry and Shidler (1998) argue that sound bites consist of sources’ voices which help determine the direction of political life. Their study shows that sound bites made up 30 per cent of all campaign time in 1992. Moreover, sound bites are susceptible to ideological news bias as those that are chosen tend to confirm the reporters’ theories. Farnsworth and Lichter (2007) conclude that sound bites of political candidates’ speeches shrank from 42 seconds in 1968 to only eight seconds in 2004. Bucy and Grabe (2007) criticise sound bite research for being too narrowly focused on pieces of audio where a candidate can be seen talking at least part of the time. They argue that in contrast to these shrinking traditional sound bites, image bites, where politicians are seen but not heard, are increasing in number. They also state that image bites are ‘‘vastly underappreciated as a source of political information’’ as they convey ‘‘important cues about status, viability, and physical and mental fitness for office’’ (Bucy and Grabe, 2007, p. 653). In the scholarly debate, the use of sound bites is usually argued to be problematic. Politicians’ voices are reduced to eight-second statements while journalists are the ones who sum up, value and contextualise the ideas and views expressed (Farnsworth and Lichter, 2007). Blumler and Gurevitch (2001) refer to this as a fragmentised and interventionist style of journalism. However, in his analysis of three different political news cultures, Esser (2008) underlines the importance

• f

considering cross-national variations when it comes to the use of sound and image bites before jumping to general conclusions about an interventionist political news journalism. He finds the interventionist approach most prominent in the United States whereas France, for example, is described as non-interventionist. A study by Kroon Lundell and Eriksson (2010) confirms that cultural variations in sound bite use are important to recognise. Their quantitative study of the use of various interview sequences in news and current affairs programming in the United Kingdom and Sweden establishes that sound bites in the news are twice as common in Swedish news 478 A ˚ SA KROON LUNDELL AND MATS EKSTRO ¨ M

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broadcasts (16.4 per cent out of the various forms of interview material used) in comparison to news programming in the United Kingdom (8.8 per cent). Overall, though, encompassing news and current affairs programming in both countries (including radio and television), sound bites are perhaps less common than could be expected given worries about an interventionist journalism; 9.5 per cent of Swedish news and current affairs broadcast interview segments are dedicated to sound bites (from a range of sources) while the UK equivalent is 7.1 per cent. The relatively modest extent of sound bites in these types of programmes could lead to the false impression that, as components in the construction of news, they are not all that crucial. However, as will be illustrated in this paper, sound bites from interviews in single news reports are much more frequent than these figures suggest. This is also confirmed in Nylund’s (2006) study on the transformation of journalistic interviews to television news. Binding together both quotes and sound bites, Clayman (1995, p. 119) argues that ‘‘little is known about the actual mechanics of extract selection’’. He refers to the process by which quotes and sound bites are extracted and selected from certain (often political) events and repeated extensively in the media over time so much that they become defining moments, i.e. they come to symbolise that event in its entirety. Clayman finds that there are three main considerations for a quotation or sound bite to become such a defining moment. The first is narrative relevance; does the quote fit into the developing framework or angle? The second is conspicuousness; does the quote stand out in any particular way in, for instance, the way it is phrased or does it break established norms and conventions? The third condition is extractability; can the remark be understood autonomously? Utterances in little or no need of journalistic elaboration increase the chances (or risks!) of them becoming defining moments. In one of the few studies that examines the transformation of answers from reportersource interviews to the ways they are edited, Nylund emphasises that interviews and their editing are indeed guided by narrative relevance: ‘‘The final news output resembles the presuppositions expressed in the interviewers’ questions more than the replies of the interviewees’’ (2003b, p. 530). The sound bite concept is both a scholarly term and a professionally known one. However, it is not used in the everyday production and presentation of segments from interviews at the news desk we have studied. Instead, the established professional concept for what we here term interview bite is ‘‘say’’ (Swedish ‘‘sa ¨g’’). Although not translating particularly well into English, we would still like to make some points about this discursive choice in relation to the other concepts we find in research. In terms of function, form and content ‘‘says’’ border on both the quote and the sound bite without being exactly

• synonymous. ‘‘Says’’ are intrinsically linked to broadcast mediation (television and radio).

Moreover, this particular branding is only used for utterances from interviews, narrowing its application in comparison to the more general term sound bite; it is thus intimately linked to the audiovisual representation of talk. At the same time, and in a very commonsensical way, replies extracted from interviews can be regarded as quotes in the sense that an interviewee’s words are extracted from one context, inserted into another, and re-presented in this new context. This recontextualisation will inevitably result in a certain shift of meaning (Linell, 1998). Reported speech is used as source material, but new speech acts created as statements are introduced and presented in new contexts (Tannen, 1989, p. 108), whether these are found in broadcasts or in the press. However, an important difference is that quotes and quoting practices come with a baggage of norms, conventions and ethical concerns. Can I alter the quote and in that ‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS 479

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case in what way before I infringe on the quoted party’s integrity and risk a distortion of the statements? Should I use quotation marks or is paraphrasing a better choice? The broadcast equivalent of sound bite has not been surrounded by the same critical debate either in research or among professionals beyond the aforementioned scholarly criticism

• f a fragmentised and interventionist kind of journalism. Possibly, this could be due to the

fact that sound bites are not really seen as reported talk (i.e. quotes) per se. After all, we can see what is said by whom and therefore it may be easier to think there is less cause for foul play in terms of unwanted alterations and misrepresentations. The sound bite is also an impersonal concept as it primarily highlights the technological aspect of a broadcast utterance rather than its communicative aspect (see Bucy and Grabe’s definition above). The ‘‘say’’ concept, on the other hand, explicitly refers to the fact that what we are dealing with is first and foremost human communication rather than technology. A person is required ‘‘to say’’ something for a say to materialise. Although the word ‘‘sa ¨g’’ made the Swedish Language Advisory Board’s 2008 list of new words, it has not reached a status as a regularly used term outside the journalistic context. We suggest that the interview answer conceptualised as ‘‘say’’ possibly widens its potential as a communicative resource in the construction of news stories at least in part because it lacks the normative or ethical baggage of ‘‘the quote’’. Although we do believe that it is discursively meaningful to the reporters to routinely speak of ‘‘says’’ instead of sound bites or quotes, and that this discursive choice is rooted in, and influences, the way they exploit interview material, we will not pursue this argument further. By talking about ‘‘interview bites’’ instead of ‘‘says’’, we want to signal that it is the general practice of using interview answers as resources in the construction of news reports that we want to examine, not an odd and very specific context-bound ‘‘say practice’’. In the analysis below, we will follow the planning and production of a single news report where we examine how interview bites are integrated in the process of production. In the next section, an overview of the methodology and data will be given before the case in question is presented.

Methodology and Data

The field study was conducted by the authors during a two-week period at the news desk of Aktuellt in November 2008. Aktuellt started broadcasting in 1958 as Swedish Public Service Television’s (SVT’s) first news programme. Since late 2007, it has been launched as SVT’s in-depth news programme running on channel SVT2 at 9.00 pm. Aktuellt’s editorial aim is to dig deeper, go further and penetrate news topics from other angles than its main competitor Rapport. They want to be known for delivering ‘‘in-depth coverage’’ and therefore often choose to construct ‘‘packages’’ (in their own terminology) consisting of a number of interactive segments on the same topic, mixing reports with studio activities. It is an ethnographic study and includes observations of the reporters at work in their various professional settings, note-taking of their interactions and openness to the research problem rather than working with pre-formulated hypotheses. That being said, our main interest lay in how interviews were integrated into journalistic work throughout every stage

• f production. We subscribe to the methodological principles of ‘‘taking the viewpoint of

those studied, understanding the situated character of interaction and viewing social processes over time’’ (Silverman, 1993, p. 48, from Denzin, 1970, p. 216), while also, in the next stage, examining and discussing the results from a critical point of view. We followed 480 A ˚ SA KROON LUNDELL AND MATS EKSTRO ¨ M

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the reporters work by observing their routine assignments and how these were planned, prepared and executed. We attended joint editorial meetings and talked continuously with the reporters about what they were doing, how and why. We accompanied reporters and camera crews on interview assignments, and when possible also made recordings (with audio equipment) as the interviews were made. Our goal was to follow the main item of the day through every stage of production, including how news reports were edited, and we took turns going with different reporters to be able to compare practices in between individual reporters. We also conducted in-depth interviews (which were recorded) with the reporters who had regular assignments during the two-week period. The interviews were guided by a semi-structured questionnaire. Thus, the reporters’ work was followed as closely as possible without interfering with their various tasks. Our data consist of extensive observations and notes capturing the everyday news work at the desk. It contains observations, notes and recordings from such contexts as interviews at-the-scene, meetings and work in the editing studio(s), as well as interview recordings with each reporter. The final broadcasts are also included. Our results are supported by different sources and by observations and notes from a range of situations in line with recommendations for single-case studies (Yin, 1984). We will now turn to the in-depth single-case analysis of interview bite practices. We have chosen to present one specific news report in order to enable a detailed level of analysis throughout the production process. However, we see this case as paradigmatic in the sense that it highlights more general characteristics and repeated practices which were observed during our two-week field experience (cf. Flyvbjerg, 1993). Thus, the conclusions drawn from this particular case are supported and informed by our larger corpus of data. We will start by providing some contextually relevant details in relation to the case as well as some points about the conditions under which the reporters work. We will then present how the interview bites are distributed and examine their function in the particular news report we have chosen as illustration. The extracts in the analysis have all been translated from Swedish by the authors.

Background*The Carnegie News Item

The report that will be analysed in some detail was the main news item of the day. The Swedish National Dept Office was to take over the ownership of Carnegie Investment Bank Inc. because of poor credit handlings. This was thought to be a surprising ruling by the Swedish FSA and was hence considered to have high news value. As Montgomery (2007, p. 41) points out, broadcast news is highly structured. The report in question is embedded within the Carnegie news item which runs for just over 14 minutes, i.e. almost half of the programme’s time. The item starts with the presenter introducing the topic, then comes the news report we will examine, followed by the presenter explaining some facts about the nature of an investment bank. Then another segment follows in which the Minister of Finance is interviewed in the studio by the

• presenter. The item is rounded off by a live studio dialogue between the presenter and
• ne of the political commentators.

Our object of analysis is the first report of the item. We want to emphasise that its structure and form do not deviate from the following report in any major way. It simply represents an established format for Aktuellt’s news reports. The two reports in the news ‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS 481

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‘‘package’’ only differ in such a way that the second one focuses on utterances by interviewed politicians whereas the first does not include any such interviewees. It is worth mentioning that the reporters at Aktuellt work very independently once given a task. The entire news crew meet in the morning to decide what to cover and a division of labour is established by the producer. On occasion, the reporters consult each

• ther or the producer about their work, but generally they go about their job without any
• supervision. In our case the reporter collects her material together with the photographer

and edits her report as she sees fit given her allotted air-time. Some reporters leave the editing to others but decide what material to use and what to discard without interference from producers as long as they stick to the time-schedule. This apparent autonomy is most likely the result of an effective socialisation where the reporters have internalised the norms and expectations required by them. Challenges to the norms seem rare (at least from what we experienced). There is a highly consensus-orientated newsroom culture and therefore the reporters can be trusted to do their job in line with editorial guidelines without explicit control from producers. The report in question is worked on by a female reporter along with a male

• photographer. Interviews are made at a press conference, at the home of one of the

interviewees and by phone from the editing studio. Images are also collected, including a recorded segment of the reporter speaking into the camera, outside the Carnegie

• building. The final news report is allotted a 3.5-minute slot.

The Distribution and Functions of Interview Bites in the Carnegie Report

The edited Carnegie news report extends over approximately 198 seconds. Figure 1 shows how the interview bites are distributed and alternated by voice-overs in the construction of the report. In all, the interview bite-time amounts to 82 seconds which is about 41 per cent of the entire report time. Consequently, 126 seconds or 59 per cent are reserved for actions by the interviewer. The main interviewer feature is the voice-over, 79 seconds in all. There is also what could be termed the enactment of a ‘‘non-interview bite’’ followed by a commentary why an interview answer was not possible to get. There are nine main interactional segments that make up the report out of which four consist of utterances made by three different interviewees. As can be seen below, the interview bites are sometimes singles and sometimes multiples. Segment 3 is built from two interview answers (3 a, b, below), and Segment 7 is constructed with the use of four answers that are cut together as if consisting of a single reply (7 ad, below). Although presented as four main interview bites, the actual bites used are eight altogether.

FIGURE 1 The distribution of interview bites in the Carnegie news report (IR, interviewer)

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1. press conference statement, source 1 (22 seconds) 2. voice-over (33 seconds) 3. (IR question) multiple-interview bite, source 1 (a, b) (22 seconds) 4. voice-over (24 seconds) 5. single-interview bite, source 2 (4 seconds) 6. voice-over (22 seconds) 7. multiple-interview bite, source 3 (a, b, c, d) (22 seconds) 8. IR enactment ‘‘non-interview bite’’ (10 seconds)comment (13 seconds) 9. single-interview bite, source 2 (24 seconds) The news report is introduced by a filmed statement from the press conference delivered by the substitute director-general of the FSA.

Statement by source 1

Eh, today the FSA has held a board meeting and handled the question about sanctioning

• Carnegie. Eh, there was a decision about withdrawing Carnegie’s permits. Consequently,

all other permits to do business with, for example, security-papers, are equally cancelled. This statement is relevant to the narrative in the sense that it immediately puts the viewer at the scene where the announcement is being made and hence enhances liveness, i.e. a feeling of the here-and-now (Bourdon, 2000; Ellis, 2000; Scannell, 1996). The newsworthiness lies both in its informative value (the viewer is told about the withdrawal

• f Carnegie’s permits) as well as in its liveness factor which is ensured by the intensity of

the moment (camera flashes are going off; close-shots of the director-general are shown; the actions of other buzzing journalists are evident). Still, this statement was not the reporter’s first choice but one she felt more or less forced to use given that the competitors at Rapport had copied her thinking and used her planned pitch. The reporter’s voice-over then swiftly refers to previous ‘‘scandals’’ and that ‘‘many’’ had believed in yet another fine and a warning but that the company’s history ‘‘today comes to an end’’. This latter statement is not really correct as the temporal take-over did not actually mean the end of the company’s existence. We do not suggest that the reporter knowingly delivers ‘‘false’’ facts but she adds some drama by choosing this type

• f narrative reconstruction. This is followed by the first interview bite from the press

conference interview with the substitute director-general, pre-fixed by a short question from the reporter (the only question included in the edited news report). The question and the prompt ‘‘no’’ are heard (see below) while showing images of the director-general talking to the media, but it is not until he starts on his longer interview bite that the images match the talk. For the viewer, it is not possible to judge whether these, in reality, two split interview bites stem from different interview segments (cf. Ekstro ¨m, 2001).

Interview bite 1

(Reporter’s question in a quiet voice: ‘‘Was this a hard decision?’’)

• No. In this case, they had a warning; there had been failings and they had been given a

warning last fall and a fine and after that they have had credit grants which have been carelessly managed resulting in considerable exposure which in turn has caused gigantic ‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS

483

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problems for the company and among other things have caused a major devaluation of the result and the exposure as such that they had towards this one customer was illegal. The reporter, not being happy with the answers from the director-general, still needs to find a way to use the ones she has got. After all, the interviewee was the one announcing the big news and is moreover to be considered an elite voice. This interview bite is labelled somewhat exasperatedly by the reporter in the editing studio as ‘‘bloody boring . . . but maybe we can use it anyway’’. She solves her dilemma by cutting in her last question of their exchange and the interviewee’s very quick reply ‘‘no’’ to start off the interview bite although, in fact, it had rounded off her short interview. Thereafter, the extended interview bite that explains what led up to the decision follows. The reporter’s problem lies partly in the fact that the explanation is thought too non-conspicuous to be attractive. It is a long and slightly erratic utterance without a clear and lucid point and distinct pauses (i.e. it breaks with the short interview bite-format). By starting with a quick question and a quick reply and then the longer interview bite, she creates a springboard for the latter in order for her to feel it usable. The following voice-over is really more or less a replica of what the director-general has just stated, i.e. that Carnegie had broken the law when lending over a billion to a single customer and that the company had previously been issued a warning and a fine of 50 million. Thus, the main content is the same but her voice-over clarifies some details with regards to the numbers involved. Of course, it is also more cohesive than the interview bite with a clear progression. The second interview bite introduces a woman representing one of the share-holders.

Interview bite 2

It’s dismal of course. During my 25 years in the business I’ve never seen anything like it. In contrast to the previous interview bite this one is short, clear and straight to the point in line with the interview bite-as-format. It is a negative assessment of the situation emphasising the seriousness of the matter made by someone who is victimised but not personally so. When watching a current affairs programme prior to starting her work on the news report, the reporter had evaluated this interviewee as someone who could express herself and her sentiments well. The reporter had also talked to her several times

• n the phone ahead of the actual interview in her home, asking her various questions.

The voice-over that follows names the alleged affair’s ‘‘big losers’’ whose company names can be seen on the screen. It is ended with an introduction to the upcoming interview bite: ‘‘And one of the large owners sums up the situation to Aktuellt like this’’.

Interview bite 3

I’m tired. Our, eh, company has lost a couple of hundred million and eh that’s a lot of money but most of all I’m tired. Fundamentally, I think that it’s a respectable company and that’s why we’ve gotten involved but it’s totally mismanaged. I can only say that I’ve never seen anything like it it’s mismanaged. In this interview bite, the only one that is accompanied by still pictures and not video, a third interviewee is introduced while a visual of his face alongside the Carnegie company brass sign is showing. Incidentally, the sign has an arrow below the name pointing to the right, and as the sign-picture is placed on the right-hand side of the screen, the arrow can be

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interpreted as a symbol of Carnegie being removed from the scene of big business. The male interviewee materialised while the report was already being edited. Another reporter came into the studio and said that she had got hold of a share-holder who ‘‘had lost money’’ and was willing to be interviewed by phone. This other reporter conducted the interview from a booth near the editing studio asking questions like, ‘‘is this a unique situation; in what way is this situation unique; what is going to happen now; how do you feel; what do you think about the company’’. As soon as the interview was over, the head reporter exclaimed matter-of-factly that ‘‘I want that thing about him being tired’’. The interview bite is explicitly referred to as an object (‘‘that thing’’) rather than a communicative statement. The interviewee’s statement about being tired is actually an answer to the fourth question posed over the phone but it gets to introduce his utterance. The interview bite, as mentioned earlier, consists of four units that have been re-shuffled into a coherent whole without obvious pauses. The fact that it is a sound bite-puzzle is virtually impossible to detect unless one has heard the original interview. This interview bite strengthens the victimising angle as the interviewee’s sentiments about being tired are repeated twice. The way the interview bite is (re-)structured implies that his tiredness is his primary concern rather than having lost ‘‘a couple of hundred million’’. Here, we would like to make a minor detour. We do not accuse the reporter of so- called ‘‘frankenbiting’’, a term used in reality-TV contexts where a taped interview with a contestant is snipped into tiny pieces, selectively edited and introduced as something entirely different from what was originally said (Gay, 2005). However, this interview bite does raise questions about the ethics of broadcast quoting. Generally, the reporters we interviewed expressed little or no concern about misrepresenting voices when converting interviews to bites. Their lack of concern was especially evident when talking about politicians who, according to the reporters, should know better than to say things they did not want them to use in the final cut. It is not within the scope of this paper to make normative claims about what is right or wrong when quoting someone in broadcast news. However, we feel that it is worth pointing out that the ways in which interview bites are used are not, from the professional perspective, bound by any strict and explicit norms or rules concerning what you can or cannot do. If it is on video tape, it is basically yours to mould into virtually any shape or form as long as the complex cuts are not obvious to the

• audience. Jump cuts on video are today minimised due to advanced editing equipment
• perated by skilled photographers. What may originally be patchworks of non-sequential

utterances come out as fairly smooth and coherent units once edited. Returning to the news report, the viewer is transported to the Carnegie building with its adorned iron gates. This is where the so-called non-interview bite is enacted by the reporter who is seen outside the company’s gates talking into a cell phone.

The non-interview bite

Hello this is XX from Swedish Television. Hi, yes we would like an interview and we’re here now outside so we’d very much like someone from Carnegie who can comment on what’s happened today. The reporter seemingly listens to a refusal to the invitation and then turns to the camera and explains that no one wants to comment on the issue despite having tried repeatedly to contact someone throughout the day. However, the no-show from a Carnegie representative was expected as they went there, having received a negative response ‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS

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several times before. Still, the reporter wanted the fact that no one would agree to an interview on camera which, when explained to the photographer in the car, he thought ‘‘to be perfect’’. The reporter did call again while waiting outside and as expected got a negative answer, but what is used in the enactment is the back-up take that was filmed if the actual call would not come out right on tape. Thus, the fake conversation was chosen over the non- fictional one to go into the report. During the last stages of editing, the reporter noticed that her allotted time in the news would not allow for the non-interview bite to be included. She was then granted a slightly extended time-slot to be able to squeeze it in. Thus, the non- interview bite was deemed very important to the report’s dramaturgy. Her presence on camera can be seen as a way for the reporter to create a sense of proximity or ‘‘nearness’’ to the event being covered (Zelizer, 1990). In the fourth interview bite, the woman representing the share-holders from the second interview bite returns and gets to conclude the news report.

Interview bite 4

The company culture has played a big part I think because Carnegie has had problems of the same character for a long time an-, and I said earlier eh almost two years ago that they should have a course in ethics for the whole company and then they mostly laughed at that and eh ‘‘it isn’t appropriate for these kinds of companies’’ but this shows that maybe they should have listened to it anyway. Although a 24-second interview bite this is not cut from different answers but consists of one single reply. The interviewee almost comes off as an all-knowing teacher whose instructions have been neglected by ill-judging, misbehaving business pupils. The news report is rounded off with images of a dark and rainy pavement as the last sentence is being spoken.

Discussion and Conclusions

On the basis of our study and the illustrative case which has been presented in this paper, we propose that the interview bite operates on three levels, as (1) a format; (2) a mental representation; (3) an artefact. First, an interview bite (by the journalists’ conceptualised as a ‘‘say’’) is a format because it is literally used to describe short utterances from interviews caught on camera. It is a conventional expression for speaking about interview sources’ replies which fundamentally shapes the news-gathering and production process. The interview bite-format decides what journalistic options are possible and which are not. A reporter describes these material and symbolic boundaries as ‘‘the curse of the format’’, referring to the need of collecting short, lucid and interesting replies from interviewees to go into news reports. The interview bite can consist of several sentences or a single one but it rarely extends past 25 seconds. From a Western media perspective, these interview bites seem very long considering that sound bites, in previous research, are found to average about eight seconds. The explanation behind the Swedish extended interview bites is most probably to be found in the news format of Aktuellt. They want to be known as the news programme that presents in-depth coverage and part of this is to produce longer news reports allowing for longer interview bites to be used. However, it is also relevant to point out that apart from this context-specific explanation, the 486 A ˚ SA KROON LUNDELL AND MATS EKSTRO ¨ M

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eight-second-sound bite result is by and large based on political candidates’ statements during election times. If we broaden sound bites to also encompass shorter utterances by all kinds of interviewees in daily news programmes like Aktuellt, in, for instance, the United Kingdom or the United States, it is fair to assume that the interview bites used in these news programmes would not necessarily be limited to an average of eight seconds. Second, an interview bite is also a mental representation as the reporters’ envision potential interview bites and from this decide who to approach as a potential interviewee. Thus, the interview bite, although in fact non-existing in its material sense during the planning phase, nevertheless serves as an effective weeding measure when deciding who is going to be selected as a source. Of course, simultaneously, the reporters’ prior experience and knowledge about the requirements of the format also come into play. Third, once collected the interview bite becomes an artefact, a concrete ‘‘thing’’ that you can work with in the editing studio in order to create your news report with little restrictions when it comes to how it can be used. These three dimensions of the interview bite interact and collectively work as powerful motivations for the choices made by the reporters throughout the news production process. We would now like to re-visit Clayman’s (1995) considerations to enhance quotability and interpret them in relation to the interview bite-oriented journalism that has been illustrated in this paper. Notably, Clayman’s primary focus was prominent defining moments like the analysed ‘‘Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy’’ quote from the 1988 US presidential debate between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle. However, he also states that ‘‘more generally, it is argued that journalists select quotations and sound bites by reference to three basic considerations’’ (Clayman, 1995, p. 118, authors’ italics). These are, as was mentioned earlier, narrative relevance, conspicuousness and extractability. It is the degree to which his results may be generalised, and/or the logics behind his considerations, that we would like to address. Our basic argument is that in everyday news production, the rationale behind the choices made concerning which interview bites are chosen differ from those identified by Clayman. The first and perhaps the most important consideration to enhance quotability is narrative relevance. The main logic behind it is that quotes that fit into the developing framework or angle will be favoured. Similarly, Nylund (2003a, pp. 5301) reinforces Clayman’s argument in his study of reportersource interviews and their editing by concluding that ‘‘the editing of the interviewees’ replies strongly indicate that . . . the reporters’ preliminary idea of what the news story could or should look like, seems to govern both how the interview is conducted as well as how it is edited into the final news story’’. Of course, journalists are socialised into a certain way of thinking in terms of which angles usually work given the event that is to be covered. Also, the format of a specific medium and genre guides the way a news report is put together. Thus, potential framings are already in the walls of the newsrooms, so to speak. However, in the daily news work we have studied, the reporters are not necessarily geared towards a certain given angle once a news topic has been decided upon. Instead, much of their concern, and that which takes up a lot of their time, is researching by phone in order to find and try out sources; are they capable of generating interview bites that are format-friendly? Once the sources have been interviewed, the potential interview bites are examined, discarded or chosen to go into the report. As have been previously argued, they are worked on as artefacts (not unlike pieces in a puzzle) in the editing studio. The reporter reviews the available interview bites and decides in what way they can be used and how. ‘‘INTERVIEW BITES’’ IN TELEVISION NEWS 487

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Thus, in interview bite-oriented journalism, utterances from interviews are not necessarily gathered exclusively, or even primarily, to fit into an evolving narrative. Rather, the storyline can equally be created from the interview bites available. This means that the

• utcome of the interview bite-gathering process decides the angle instead of the reverse.

However, of course, it is also a two-way street where pre-conceived angles are reinforced, adjusted or discarded depending on the interview bites available. Clayman describes the second condition that facilitates the quotability of an utterance in the news as conspicuousness. The rationale behind this condition is that if the quote stands out from a background in the way that it is phrased, or seemingly breaks established norms, the degree to which it will be seen as quotable will increase. Here, Clayman seems to refer primarily to the sources’ spontaneous ability to provide smartly formulated sound bites which stand out from, in his case, a longer presidential debate. However, we would like to suggest that conspicuousness can equally be enhanced by technological means, i.e. the conspicuousness of an interview bite is reinforced by various journalistic techniques primarily during the editing. Indeed catchy phrases and dramatic expressions (not the least uttered by skilled politicians) can be, and are, favoured in interview bites, but often reporters work with units that are not particularly conspicuous in

• themselves. A rather plain interview bite can be emphasised as more dramatic and intense

in a following voice-over where its information is repeated, but also slightly twisted, to increase the drama. In addition, conspicuousness may be enhanced by not only choosing certain parts of an answer over others, but by switching the order of phrases from the original interview to create a different kind of flow which makes the interview bite stand out more. In the absence of a suitable interview bite, another possibility is to re-create a situation where a ‘‘non-bite’’ replaces the interview bite that never was. The fact that the reporter is not getting an answer is constructed as the pitch. Conspicuousness as a condition for increasing the degree to which an interview bite is quotable, then, may indeed be dependent on the source’s format-adaptability. However, in the absence of extraordinary interview bites, as is often the case in everyday news production, conspicuousness may be technologically ‘‘fixed’’ by the reporters doing the editing. Finally, Clayman states that a quote is favoured that can stand alone and be understood as it is. Also, ‘‘the extractability factor tends to favour segments that are temporally disjoined from the surrounding talk, so that they may easily be edited into sound bites’’ (1995, p. 127). We have found that utterances that are converted into interview bites can be rather non-autonomous; interview bites are not necessarily chosen because they speak for themselves but because they can constitute a platform from which the journalist can articulate a voice-over, which, more or less, repeats or elaborates on the content of the interview bite. A single interview bite, without its role to play in the narrative of an edited news report, is often uninteresting and most often unintelligible, not the least because the question is almost always cut out. In addition, as with the conspicuousness factor above, technological advancements make it possible to extract statements from each other and re-shuffle their order to form a seemingly coherent and un-edited whole without each utterance needing to be surrounded by natural pauses. Thus, the rationale behind the extractability factor is perhaps the most difficult one to apply in this kind of source-oriented

• journalism. Extensive labour goes into integrating the reporter’s and photographer’s

activities (voice-overs, images, advanced editing) with the chosen interview bites to form a 488 A ˚ SA KROON LUNDELL AND MATS EKSTRO ¨ M

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coherent, and seemingly smooth, narrative even though the report is most often constructed from a very scattered ground material. On a final note, we would like to emphasise the need for cross-cultural research on the use of sound and image bites beyond the current emphasis on political sources’ utterances and political campaign contexts. The kind of (non-politician) interview bites examined in this study are substantial ingredients of news reports. We therefore believe they deserve further scholarly attention in order for us to broaden our knowledge about ‘‘sound bite practices’’ and the role these play in, and for, news journalism. We have presented how interview bites structure a lot of the work at a major news desk in Sweden. To what extent our results correspond to the workings of everyday broadcast news production in other countries is something we look forward to seeing investigated.

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