IMAGE BITE NEWS: THE VISUAL COVERAGE OF ELECTIONS ON U.S. TELEVISION, 1968–1992

Presidential election reports have grown faster-paced and more visual: journalists appeared more frequently and dramatically on screen, and other images and video clips multiplied. This transformation of network visual practices parallels the shift to sound bite content, emphasizing journalists over the political process, with implications for the public interest. American television is widely thought to have become faster paced and more visual in the past few decades (Gitlin 1987). The pattern also turned up in news. In Graber’s (1990) research on network political news during 1985, three of four stories showed visual scenes that appeared on screen for less than twenty seconds. In studies of the shrinking sound bite, both Hallin (1992) and Adatto (1993) noted the faster pacing of news and suggested anecdotally that it had acquired a more-visual character. Based on a close reading, Griffin (1992) observed that “image bites ” now far outnumber the sound bites that have received so much attention. These scholars and others suggest that the faster pacing and visuality of news have more than aesthetic consequences. The new form of reporting may affect the content of newscasts (Altheide 1987), the emphasis on particular actors (Steele & Barnhurst, 1996), the roles of other institution