Self-study
Sociologist: Support The intended function of news is to give us information on which to act. ███ ██ █ ████████ ████████ ████ ███████ █ ███████ ██ ██ ████████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ████████ ████████ ███ ███ ██████████ ███ ███████████ ██ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ██ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ██████████ █████████ █████ ████ ██████████████ ████ ██ █████████ ████████████ ███ ███████ ██████████ █████ ███ ████████ █████████
Objective: Find the Necessary Assumption
The sociologist concludes that in a consumer society, news can't fulfil its intended function of giving us information on which to act. This is because in a consumer society, news primarily serves as entertainment.
If we kick "consumer society" up into the domain, the sociologist's argument boils down to "news is primarily entertaining, therefore news can't give us information on which to act." Looking at it this way, it's pretty clear that there's an assumption at work: the premises don't offer any relationship between being entertaining and giving information, so that relationship must be assumed. Specifically, the sociologist needs to assume that if news is primarily entertaining, then it can't provide information on which to act.
18.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ █████████████ ████████ ████████
a
News that serves ███ ████████ ████████ ██████ ███ ██ █████████████
The sociologist's argument doesn't involve any value judgments or "should" statements, it just talks about how things are. That's already a red flag for (A). We can confirm this using the negation test, which gives us: "news can serve its intended function (providing information) and also be entertaining. That doesn't cause any problems: the sociologist's claim is that primarily entertaining news doesn't give information, not that informative news can't be entertaining at all.
Because we can negate (A) without ruining the argument, it can't be a necessary assumption.
b
Most viewers prefer ████ ████ ██ █████████████
The sociologist is only concerned with whether news is able to serve its intended function of providing actionable information. Viewers’ preferences are irrelevant to this question—they're beyond the scope of the argument, which is doesn't deal with preferences at all. Because (B) doesn't directly relate to the substance of the argument, it can't be necessary to assume.
c
News has only ███ █████████ █████████
The argument is only concerned with news’s ability to serve its intended function, which we already know is is providing actionable information. It wouldn’t matter if (C) were negated and news also had other important functions, meaning (C) is not the necessary assumption.
d
News that primarily ██████████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ███████████ ██ █████ ██ ████
In other words, if news is primarily entertaining, then it can't provide information (i.e. its intended purpose). This is exactly the necessary assumption we're looking for, because it fills in the missing premise about how news being entertaining relates to it being informative.
If we negate (D), we get: "primarily entertaining news can still give us information," then primarily entertaining news could serve its intended function. That would destroy the conclusion, which confirms that (D) is necessary to assume.
e
A news industry ████ ████ ██ ████ █ ██████ ██████████ ████████ ████ ██ ██████████████
The sociologist already establishes in the context that news in a consumer society—i.e. the relevant domain—is primarily entertainment. Because we're confined to this particular domain, we don't need (E) to be true across all possible circumstances where the news industry wants to make a profit. (E) isn't necessary because it's outside the scope of the argument.