Law & Order: vehicle for misinformation
I Tivo Law & Order and SVU. Having watched at least 70% of episodes from both series, I have come to notice a trend. Comments on everything from the health of food to the dangers of the internets are mentioned off-the-cuff or used as central plot concepts with irreverance for the truth.
While fishing, a character mentions the dangers of the mercury in the fish he’s catching. Another episode deals with the ease of obtaining your entire life story by ‘following the bread crumbs you leave on the Internet’ or emailing a worm that renders one’s computer completely vulnerable to eavesdropping. These factoids are often subtle and always unverified.
Taken together, these factoids verify existing suspicions in people’s minds. Coincidentally, these suspicions often support entrenched industry. In the two cases above, the farm-raised fish industry and organizations that capitalize on identity theft and virus protection like banks, credit card companies and software producers.