LSAT 16 - Section 3 - Question 23

Here we have a five star question with a peculiar question stem. We should at least know that this is a strengthening question because it asks: Which one of the following ethical criteria, if valid, would serve to support the journalist’s conclusion. The question adds another requirement of a correct answer, stating it will support the conclusion “while placing the least constraint on the flow of reported information.” An extra qualification can throw you off, but thankfully this isn’t something you see on LR questions anymore. The LSAT writer wants this requirement to lurk in the back of your mind and distract you, but when an extra requirement is added, you should focus on approaching the question as normal and only bring in the second requirement if you have multiple answers which meet the first.

The stimulus tells us about a journalist in a civil war who found evidence that the government was responsible for refugees starving. Unfortunately, government censors removed any mention of the government from the journalist’s report. The journalist concluded (alarm bells should be going off for you here) that it was ethically permissible to file the censored report, because (more alarm bells) it would be preceded by a notice that it had gone through government censors. This is a rare case where the stimulus is more straightforward than the question stem.

The key sentence is the last one, it gives us the conclusion which a correct answer must support, and the journalist’s reasoning for it. She believes that although the report had been altered by the government, it is still ethically permissible to publish the censored version if readers are explicitly told it had been cleared by government censors. The correct answer will give us an ethical principle which support’s the journalist’s reasoning, while incorrect answers will fail to do this or even outright contradict the journalist’s conclusion. Let’s move to the answers now:

Answer Choice (A) The first thing we should do when judging this answer is ignore “it is ethical in general to report known facts”, because it is a broad statement which adds very little to justify the journalist’s decision. What we are interested in is the rest of the answer, which only tells us what is unethical. The “if” should jump at you, and if we convert this answer to a conditional we get the principle that “if the omitted facts of a report might substantially alter an impression of the subject which would be congruent with the included facts, then it is unethical.” Congruent is thrown in to try and confuse you, but essentially just means consistent, i.e non-contradictory. This answer is incorrect, it greatly weakens our journalist’s conclusion because she did omit facts that would alter a reader’s impression of the government. I think it is safe to say that if you found out a government was starving people, your impression of it would be altered.

Answer Choice (B) This answer also begins with the general principle “it is ethical to report known facts” which does nothing to help us and should be ignored. Like A the rest of the answer only tells us the conditions for being unethical. This answer weakens what we wish to support, because it is true that the journalist didn’t report facts she knew which might exonerate other factors (like the rebels and nature) by assigning responsibility for the refugees starvation to the government.

Answer Choice (C) If this were a weakening question, this would be a great answer because it necessarily excludes the journalist’s action from being ethical, seeing as she filed a report which a censor had deleted unfavorable material from. But this is a strengthening question, and therefore C is incorrect.

Correct Answer Choice (D) This answer includes an if statement within an unless statement. If we translate it, we can get “If there is a censorship warning, then it is not true that if you report censored material, it is unethical.” This supports the journalist’s conclusion by supporting her reasoning that a censorship notice negates any ethical issues with publishing censored material.

Answer Choice (E) You know what to omit here. This answer is mostly a repeat of D, but with the addition of an AND statement. To be ethical a censored report’s reported facts (i.e the ones that weren’t censored) must now also not give a misleading impression by themselves. This answer is essentially a combination of A and D, and is incorrect for the same reason that A is. The reported facts by themselves, independent from the censored facts and the censorship notice, do give a misleading impression of the government. If you just read the facts that were included, you wouldn’t get the impression that the government was starving people.