Chrisonomicon

Monday, October 14, 2002

I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist or enthusiast of legal matters but after reading about Coca-Cola’s alleged fraud and copyright cover-up this weekend, I can’t help but wonder if our judicial system truly is the blind matriarch we’ve come to recognize and cherish. This ten-page, strenuously-technical report tried my patience ( here is a short synopsis for those without the time or energy). The author offered an interesting tid-bit at the end, however, addressing the societal trends in regards to media in a statement that was congratulatory, ironically applicable, and much more interesting:

Broadcast news media seeks to condense issues to their most diminutive form. It has, over the past fifty years of its evolution, gradually reduced the life span of a 'story' to the space allocated between the real estate owned by their corporate sponsors. In fact, the whole concept of a 'news bite' is just that, a short, simplistic hors d'oeuvre of information that can travel through the airwaves and telephone wires just long enough to keep your attention on the next advertisement. And in this new paradigm of story-telling and news-breaking, there isn't enough time for any valid exploration of the true nature of power and its matrix of inter-dependent agencies. We cannot deny the fact that, as the most pervasive medium for information-gathering on the planet, television's limitations have severely impacted and damaged the collective capabilities of its viewership.