Negative Portrayal Of The Intelligence Community Essay

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This thesis hypothesizes that the repeatedly negative portrayal of the Intelligence Community, its agents, and it’s employees by prime time television shows is eroding the public’s confidence and trust in the IC. This topic must begin with a basic discussion of how prime time programming portrays the Intelligence Community, its agenda and its employees. Following this discussion, existing literature within the scope of this paper’s thesis can be divided into two main categories: general information on the television viewing habits of people, and more technical research on how people’s attitudes and beliefs are shaped by those habits.

Portrayal of the Intelligence Community
There is currently a mix of ways that the Federal Government, the
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This thesis posits that this overwhelmingly negative portrayal in “soft” media is damaging the confidence in the Intelligence Community because a persons’ mindset is different when watching entertainment broadcasts than it would be when watching news, informational or educational programming. When watching the latter, people tend to be more mentally active and attentive and therefore, rationally process the information they are receiving. However, when watching entertainment programming, people acquire information and images without this active screening method and thus, process it differently. Entertainment television shows “…define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments and suggest remedies…” with no interaction from the viewer. Additionally, the manner in which common themes repeat increases a person’s exposure to them, which in turn increases the viewer’s mental accessibility of these themes, which then elicits the repeating negative influence. This information demonstrates that prime time television programming is overwhelmingly showing the Intelligence Community

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