LR Question 7 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Unlike newspapers in the old days, today’s newspapers…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: Violent crime is out of control! Don’t leave your house!
REASONING: The newspapers! They’re talking about crime! More than they used to!
ANALYSIS: The flaw here is that newspapers and TV may report an increasing amount of crime even if crime is not actually increasing. They might run lots of crime stories just because the ratings were good.
We should use actual crime statistics to decide whether to leave our houses or not.
___________
- CORRECT. This means that the media now gives crime much more attention. So the same level of crime would generate many more news stories.
- This strengthens the argument because it confirms that crime is out of control in the author’s city.
- It’s hard to say what this factoid means. It’s possible that people experience more crime in their neighborhood’s simply because they spend more time there. This definitely doesn’t let us weaken the argument.
- This could mean, for example, that previously there were 1,000 murders and 10,000 crimes overall. Now there could be 10,000 murders and 200,000 other crimes. Murders are a smaller proportion of crime now, but there are many more of them.
- This answer talks about news magazines rather than newspapers. It suggests newspapers are less influential since news magazines are now more influential. There’s two problems with this: first, less is a relative term. Newspapers could still be extremely influential even if they’re less influential now. Second, even if newspapers were no longer influential, that wouldn’t make them wrong. The argument is about whether newspapers are right, not whether people are influenced by newspapers.
More Resources for Weaken Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Weaken questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers weaken questions.
Why is answer choice A correct??Maybe the reason why they have more comprehensive coverage of violent crimes is because there is more of it.
And for the same reason that answer choice A is correct, answer choice C should be as well, being that I could say that “playing a more important role today in informing the public about crime” could just as well mean that they are just more important now, not that the crime actually went up.
Comprehensive coverage of violent crime = the coverage of the crime that exists is more thorough. E.g. suppose you have 100 crimes. In the past you might have 30 stories, and now you have 100 stories about these crimes. This does not mean crime increased, but rather coverage of existing crimes became more complete. This is what A is saying.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
I think the reason E is wrong is its mentioning of “news magazine”. Is that right? Thx!
You’re right, I’ve edited the explanation. Thank you!
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
HELP! I took “comprehensive coverage” in (A) to mean that today’s reporters are more detailed in the crime stories, not that they are covering more crime stories. ow should I have avoided this mistake!?
Hey, so in a situation like this, it might be helpful to think of some real life examples.
So if A meant “more detailed crime stories,” we could potentially have a situation where all these news papers are covering Ted Bundy in super close details, but not mentioning other criminals. So you might think, “Geez, this Bundy guy is dangerous, but lucky there’s only one of him! I can still go outside.”
Which makes sense, since he can’t harm everyone, so the “one should not leave one’s home” part wouldn’t be very applicable. But if we take A to mean that reporters are dedicating more newspaper real estate to talking about ALL crimes (including crimes that were overlooked in the “old days”), then one might think that crime is out of control.