DelSingh wrote:
If you were stuck between A vs D, here's my reasoning:
(D) This was not the first time that this network news organization has aired a controversial report on the economy that has inspired viewers to complain to the network.
You have to ask yourself: If they lost viewership before, why in the world would they put out a controversial report again. Even the if the report was put out with intent, you have to consider the question stem - it asks "which MOST strongly supports the network's position" answer choice A beats D.
(A) The other major network news organizations reported similar reductions in viewership during the same week. (correct)
This is much stronger than D because it shows that there was another reason as to why viewership dropped. There was an another occurrence.
Do realize though, if A wasn't an option D would be a good choice.
Actually, (D) shouldn't be considered at all. Let me discuss why.
Argument:
A network aired a controversial report.
It received many complaints about the report.
It experienced a drop in viewership in the following week.
The network maintains that negative reactions to the report had nothing to do with its loss of viewers.
We need to strengthen that the report had nothing to do with loss of viewers.
(D) This was not the first time that this network news organization has aired a controversial report on the economy that has inspired viewers to complain to the network.
So we know now that they have aired controversial reports before and got complaints. First of all, (D) doesn't tell us that there was no loss of viewers when they aired controversial reports in the past. If there was loss of viewers in the past too, then the network's claim is not strengthened - if anything, it is weakened a little. Even if there was no loss of viewers in the past, the network's claim still doesn't get strengthened much because perhaps this time, the report was way beyond the tolerance level of people - we don't know. Remember, past doesn't predict the future accurately and the future doesn't need to mirror the past. Hence, more often than not, past events will not provide much support to the future events. But we only have the past as reference to what will happen in the future so sometimes we base our hypothesis on the past.
On the other hand, option (A) gives an alternative reason for the drop - some outside factor which is responsible for the viewership drop of many channels. This strengthens the network's position that the report was not responsible for the drop.
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Karishma
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