LSAT 151 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q18

LR Question 18 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Blogger: Traditionally, newspapers have taken…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: The best way to understand how journalism changed is to think about different business strategies.

REASONING: Right now, the media marketplace is crowded and journalists need to stand out [and do partisan stories]. Whereas objective standards emerged in newspapers with no rivals, whose main goal was to avoid offending readers.

ANALYSIS: The author makes an argument that sounds good. On necessary assumption questions, you should look for two concepts that seem the same, but are different. It’s in those places that LSAC will try to make you make the assumption yourself, without realizing.

Here, it happens in the final line. The author says newspapers without competition used objectivity, because they wanted to avoid offending people. Seems sensible….but, why? Take this sentence: “Newspapers used swear words, because they wanted to avoid offending people”. Well, that makes….no sense, unless you assume swear words are inoffensive. If you add that assumption, the argument is good.

See the trick? LSAC figures you already assume objective reporting is inoffensive, and so you won’t notice that the argument itself makes that assumption.

___________

1. It doesn’t matter how partisan a journalist is. What matters is how partisan the articles are. Partisan reporters can produce neutral writing.
2. This verges on contradicting the argument, so it isn’t necessary. The author was saying that objective reporting causes less of a stir than partisan reporting, but at least objective reporting doesn’t offend people. The author doesn’t explicitly say whether people prefer partisan reporting, but it at least sounds as if objective reporting is boring.
3. I found this very tempting. But, newer media may not be direct competitors with newspapers. Or perhaps the newer media are poorly managed, etc. For a variety of reasons, the newer media could be failing even though the partisan reporting strategy is a good one for them. So, this isn’t strictly necessary.
   Negation: The newer media outlets are not increasing in popularity at the expense of traditional newspapers.
4. CORRECT. If this isn’t true, then it destroys the idea that newspapers used objective reporting as a business strategy. Business strategies are intentional.
   Negation: Newspapers didn’t think objective reporting was less likely to offend than partisan reporting. Objective reporting was preferred for other reasons.
5. This is a red herring. It talks about what is true in fact. But the stimulus only said that newspapers believed that objective reporting was essential to journalism. Fact and belief are completely separate on the LSAT. The newspapers could very well have been operating under an incorrect belief. In that case, they would have believed that objectivity was important…..