In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent

Question

In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent. The content of news programs reveals that reporters allowed the personal biases reflected in this voting pattern to affect their news coverage: 54 percent of coverage concerning the challenger was negative, compared with only 30 percent of that concerning the incumbent.

The argument is logically most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it

(A) presumes, without providing justification, that both candidates received equal amounts of coverage overall
(B) ignores the possibility that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent
(C) presumes, without providing justification, that allowing biases to influence reporting is always detrimental to the resulting news coverage
(D) ignores the possibility that the electorate’s voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates
(E) ignores the possibility that reporters generally fear losing access to incumbents more than they fear losing access to challengers

SOMNATH1812 · Answer

Why is it not option A? I assumed that this must be said by someone to spread some propoganda.

Shreya1211 · Answer

Hi  MartyMurray  !
Can you please share your approach for this question?
Specially, why A is wrong?

Thanks in advance!

MartyMurray · Answer

In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent. The content of news programs reveals that reporters allowed the personal biases reflected in this voting pattern to affect their news coverage: 54 percent of coverage concerning the challenger was negative, compared with only 30 percent of that concerning the incumbent.

The conclusion of the argument is the following:

The content of news programs reveals that reporters allowed the personal biases reflected in this voting pattern to affect their news coverage

The support for the conclusion is the following:

54 percent of coverage concerning the challenger was negative, compared with only 30 percent of that concerning the incumbent.

We see that the reasoning of the argument is the following. Since most of the coverage concerning the challenger was negative whereas just 30 percent of the coverage concerning the incumbent was negative, reporters must have allowed their preference for the incumbent to cause them to produce more negative coverage of the challenger.

The argument is logically most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it

This is a logical flaw question, and the correct answer will describe a way in which the argument is flawed.

(A) presumes, without providing justification, that both candidates received equal amounts of coverage overall

Notice that the reasoning is based on the percentage of coverage concerning each candidate that was negative:

- Over half, 54 percent, of the coverage concerning the challenger was negative.

- Only 30 percent of the coverage concerning the incumbent was negative.

So, the conclusion is based on those percentages.

Those percentages support the conclusion even if the candidates did NOT receive equal amounts of coverage overall.

After all, even if the candidates received different amounts of coverage, it remains the case that most of the coverage of the challenger was negative whereas under a third of the coverage of the incumbent was negative. So, it appears that reporters decided for some reason to say mostly negative things about the challenger, and it's reasonable to conclude in that case that the reporters allowed their personal biases to affect what they reported even if they covered one candidate more than the other.

So, the argument doesn't necessarily presume "that both candidates received equal amounts of coverage" since it works even if they didn't receive equal amounts of coverage.

Eliminate.

(B) ignores the possibility that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent

When we see "ignores the possibility" in a Logical Flaw question answer choice, for that choice to be the correct answer, the possibliity described must be something that would weaken the argument if true.

So, would that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent weaken the argument if true?

It certainly would.

After all, if there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent, there would be an alternative reason why a greater percentage of the coverage of the challenger than of the incumbent was negative. Rather than that reporters allowed their biases to affect their coverage, in that case, it could be that what was going on was simply that there was more negative news about the challenger.

In that case, the fact that a greater percentage of the coverage concerning the challenger was negative would not mean that reporters allowed the personal biases reflected in this voting pattern to affect their news coverage.

So, we can see that the argument does indeed ignore the possibility that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent.

Keep.

(C) presumes, without providing justification, that allowing biases to influence reporting is always detrimental to the resulting news coverage

Notice that the conclusion is simply that "reporters allowed the personal biases ... to affect their news coverage."

The conclusion does not involve any point about biases influencing reporting being "detrimental."

In fact, given what the argument says, it's possible that the author does not believe that that allowing biases to influence reporting is detrimental to the resulting news coverage.

So, we have no reason to believe that the author of the argument presumes that allowing biases to influence reporting is always detrimental to the resulting news coverage.

Eliminate.

(D) ignores the possibility that the electorate’s voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates

When we see "ignores the possibility" in a Logical Flaw question answer choice, for that choice to be the correct answer, the possibliity described must be something that would weaken the argument if true.

So, notice that, even if "the electorate’s voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates," that information does not weaken the argument .

After all, even if the electorate’s voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates, the fact that news coverage concerning the challenger was more negative than coverage concering the incumbent provides support for the conclusion that reporters allowed their personal biases to affect their news coverage.

So, it's not true that the argument ignores the possibility that the electorate’s voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates.

Eliminate.

(E) ignores the possibility that reporters generally fear losing access to incumbents more than they fear losing access to challengers

To me this choice is hard to eliminate because it seems to be saying basically that the argument ignores the possibility reporters had an alternative reason for creating more negative coverage of the challenger than of the incumbent: the reporters were concerned that negative coverage of the incumbent would cause them to lose access to the incumbent.

At the same time, I think we can safely choose (B) over this choice because the possibility that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than the incumbent is more clearly connected to the difference in coverage than this possibility of concern about loss of access.

After all, we have to make some assumptions about loss of access to connect fear of loss of access to a lower percentage of negative coverage.

For one thing, does negative coverage cause loss of access? That it does is not clear. In fact, it could be that a candidate would allow access to stop negative coverage.

Eliminate.

Correct answer:  B

SudhanshuC · Answer

Option B

As per the argument, news coverage was influenced by reporters' personal views - Challenger, whom the reporters were not supporting had more -ve reviews.

It is possible that the challenger did offer newsworthy -ve stories, only that the reporters published.

VerbalBot · Answer

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In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent

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In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent

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