#24 - Editorial: One of our local television stations has

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—PR. The correct answer choice is (C)

Your task in this Strengthen question is to select the answer choice containing a principle that, once
added to the stimulus, will support the conclusion that the television station’s coverage was good
journalism. Reordered, the argument proceeds:

Premise: the information reported was accurate

Premise: the newscast had significantly more viewers than it normally does, because
many people are curious about the politician’s nephew’s problems

Conclusion: thus, the coverage was good journalism

Your prephrase is that the correct answer will provide a rule that will connect with the editorial’s
description of the coverage to support the conclusion that the coverage was good journalism. The
editorial provides two reasons to think the coverage was good journalism: 1) the information was
accurate; and 2) people are curious about the nephew’s problems. The correct answer likely will
provide a rule stating that coverage bearing one or both of these characteristics is good journalism.

The incorrect answers will not provide a rule connecting these characteristics of the coverage to
good journalism, or could state that these factors are related to bad journalism.

Answer choice (A): While the stimulus began with the fact that the station had been criticized,
the editorial’s conclusion did not pertain to when journalism deserves to be criticized. Instead, the
argument had to do only with what comprises good journalism.

Answer choice (B): This choice has no effect on the conclusion, because there was no fact presented
indicating intentional misrepresentation of the facts of the case.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice. This choice is correct, because it provides a
conditional rule stating that when journalism has the two factors associated with the coverage of the
politician’s nephew, then it is good journalism. The relationship could be diagrammed:

provides accurate information on a subject of considerable interest good journalism

Answer choice (D): This choice is incorrect because it states something that is required if you have
good journalism, but does not provide a rule to help determine whether the characteristics of this
station’s coverage are also consistent with good journalism.

Answer choice (E): This choice provides the mistaken negation of the information helpful to
determining whether the station’s journalism was good journalism. This relationship could be
diagrammed:

satisfies public interest

+ good journalism

provides accurate information

[Mmjd12]

Normally I hesitate to chose answers that are negated, unless I'm absolutely sure it is correct. However I did chose (E) for this one, because it looked like the contrapositive of what I thought was the diagram:

Good Journalism Accurate Info + satisfies curiosity

I now realize this is backwards. I did identify the conclusion as "coverage was good journalism" Should that have been an indication to me that GJ was the necessary condition? If a conclusion is part of a conditional statement, does that mean it is always the necessary clause?

thank you

[Dana D]

Hey Mmjd12,

As you identified, the conclusion of the argument was that the coverage was good journalism. The reasoning the author used to justify this was good journalism was that the information was accurate, and the newscast had significantly more views because people were curious about the nephew.

So, the argument sets up a few conditions as possibly being sufficient for good journalism (accurate info/ increased views), but we need an answer choice that will explicitly establish this conditional relationship. When you look at answer choice (C), we get the rule:

Accurate information on a subject where there is considerable interest good journalism

which would let us say that this particular story was good journalism.

Answer choice (E), in contrast, tells us:

journalism that doesn't
satisfy curiosity
and good journalism
doesn't provide
accurate information

The issue here is that we don't satisfy the sufficient conditions here - we have information that is accurate and that does satisfy curiosity.

Hope that helps!