IT IS IMPLIED IN THE PASSAGE THAT GAULISH________.A. IS DECLINING IN...

3/2 to 2 hours, which characterized nineteenth century political discourse, has given way to the 30-second advertisement and the ten-second “sound bite” in broadcast news. Increasingly, the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather the viewing audience who will hear and see a snippet of the speech on the news. In these abbreviated forms, much of what constituted the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost. In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others. In snippets, politicians assert but do not argue. Because television is an intimate medium, speaking through it require a changed political style that was more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old style stump speech. Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach US to analyze words and print. However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills. Recognizing the power of television’s pictures, politicians craft staged events, called pseudo-event, designed to attract media coverage. Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relation advisers for televised consumption. Sound bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements.