#24 - Clearly, a democracy cannot thrive without effective

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion—SN. The correct answer choice is (E)

This stimulus contains a conditional argument, with two conditional premises and a conditional conclusion. The first premise, located in the second sentence, can be diagrammed as:

knowledgable electorate = electorate knowledgable about important political issues

• Sufficient Necessary
  
  democracy thrives knowledgable electorate

Next, we are told that if an electorate is knowledgable about those issues (i.e., knowledgable electorate), then it must have “access to unbiased information about the government”:

access = access to unbiased information about the government

• knowledgable electorate access

Combining these premises together, we get the conditional chain:

• democracy thrives knowledgable electorate access

From this information, the author concludes that “a democracy cannot thrive without effective news media.” This conclusion is flawed, because the concept of an “effective news media” did not occur previously in the stimulus.
We know from the question stem that this is a Justify the Conclusion question. Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will prove the conclusion by tying it to the premises without any gaps. Here, the most likely prephrase is that if the electorate has access to unbiased information about the government, then it must be the case that there is an effective news media:

• access effective news media

creating the chain:

democracy thrives knowledgable electorate access effective news media

and proving the conclusion:

• democracy thrives effective news media

Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will establish this relationship between access to unbiased information about the government and an effective news media.

Answer choice (A): This answer choice tells us that if there is an effective news media, then there must be a thriving democracy:

• effective news media democracy thrives

which is the reverse of what we need to prove the conclusion is valid.

Answer choice (B): Here, the conditional relationship describes the reverse of the conditional relationship in the stimulus:

• knowledgable electorate access

Just like answer choice (A), this answer choice does not justify the conclusion.

Answer choice (C): As with answer choices (A) and (B), this answer choice is the reverse of one of the relationships in the stimulus:

• access democracy thrives

Answer choice (D): In this case, the answer choice deals with the biased access to information, a situation that is the opposite of what was described in the stimulus.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice because it provides the link between the access to information and effective news media described in our prephrase:

• access effective news media

proving the conclusion is valid.

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.,
I recognized the assumption must include rogue terms "effective news media" and "unbiased info on government" which is why I was able to have answer contenders of D and E. I didn't pick E because it was in negative language and didn't match my chain of conditional reasoning. As opposed to D, that did match the contrapositive of my conditional reasoning.

This is how I solved it:
Conclusion: D survive Effective News Media
Contrapositive: NOT Effective News Media D WON'T survive

I combined the 2 premises to form conditional chain. Is this correct?

D survives knowledgable elec. Unbiased Gov. Info
Contrapositive: Biased Gov. Info Elec. NOT knowledgeable D WON'T survive

Because answer choice D match my contrapositive of premises. I chose D over E. What makes answer choice D wrong? .
What makes answer choice E correct? Answer choice E is written in negative language such as "will not have access to unbiased info" as opposed to "have unbiased info". Can someone please clarify this. I spend a lot of time on this question.

Thanks in advance!

[g_lawyered]

Also, I tried using the Justify Formula (Premise + Answer Choice = Conclusion) to prove answer choice E, and I didn't think it was correct. Can someone please demonstrate how we can use the Justify Formula to decipher between answer choice D and E?
Thanks in advance!

[Beth Hayden]

Hi GG,

The negative language definitely makes this question more difficult!

I started off with a similar diagram:

C: Thriving democracy Effective news media
P: Thriving democracy Knowledgeable electorate Access to unbiased info

So you're right that we're missing a link between having an effective news media and having access to unbiased information.

Answer choice (E) fills that link perfectly, but you have to translate out the negative language. Here is how I would diagram (E):

Access to unbiased info Effective news media

You can get there by using the unless equation. The phrase modified by "without" becomes the necessary condition, and then the remaining term is negated and becomes the sufficient condition. You could also think about it this way: if there is access to unbiased information, we know that there must have been effective news media.

Now let's look at (D).

I would rephrase your contrapositive slightly: No access to unbiased info --> Democracy won't thrive

Here's how I would diagram (D):

Exposed to biased information --> Democracy won't thrive

This is actually a slightly different statement. There is biased information out there about the government, and there is also unbiased information out there about the government. The electorate can have access or no access to either one separately. What if there was no news at all? Then you would have no access to unbiased info, but you also would have no access to biased information either.

I hope that helps!
Beth