The question stem says the argument's conclusion is properly inferred if which of the following is assumed, so this is a sufficient assumption question.

The correct answer, if we add it to the argument, should make this argument valid.

So, in other words, what that is saying is, in order for a democracy to thrive, it is necessary to have effective news media.

After all, it's going to introduce support for that conclusion.

So, already I know, almost certainly, the main conclusion of the argument is going to be, democracy requires effective news media in order to thrive.

And let's figure out why.

Because a democracy cannot thrive without an electorate that is knowledgeable about important political issues,

and an electorate can be knowledgeable in this way only if it has access to unbiased information about the government.

So this last sentence is giving us two separate statements.

One statement is, a democracy cannot thrive without an electorate that's knowledgeable about important political issues.

And then the other statement, which is another premise, an electorate can be knowledgeable in this way only if it has access to unbiased information about the government.

So everything in the last sentence here is a premise, there are two premises that support the conclusion in the first sentence.

Now, because this is a sufficient assumption problem, which is very often related to conditional logic,

and I can see in this argument that I have conditional indicators, I have the without, I have the cannot thrive without, I have an only if,

because I see that, that tells me that the problem is going to be about conditional relationships.

So to help you understand what's going on in this argument, let me go ahead and sketch out a diagram.

Below this line here is the conclusion that we're going to try to prove,

and one way you can think of the conclusion is, if a democracy thrives, then it is necessary to have effective news media.

And if you're confused about how I got that representation for the first sentence,

this really just means to go back to review the group three indicators, the without and the unless,

that's what I'm using here to get to this understanding.

The first sentence means effective news media is necessary to thrive.

And of course you also could have done that as the contrapositive, if no effective news media,

then that means a democracy will not thrive.

Either one of these representations would have been fine, so it doesn't matter which one you used.

Now let's take a look at the first premise here, a democracy cannot thrive without an electorate that's knowledgeable about important political issues.

So again, we have this word without, which is just like the word unless.

What that premise is saying is, in order for a democracy to thrive,

it is necessary that the public be knowledgeable about those issues.

And I'll just write knowledgeable.

That's a stand-in for the idea of knowledgeable about important political issues.

The other way you could have thought about this sentence was, if a public is not knowledgeable,

then the democracy cannot thrive.

That means the exact same thing.

Now the final premise says, an electorate can be knowledgeable in this way.

So if it is knowledgeable about important political issues,

then it has access to unbiased information about the government.

The phrase only if introduces a necessary condition.

So what that sentence is saying is, if knowledgeable, then here is what's necessary.

Access to unbiased information.

Now you might notice that the idea of knowledgeable here matches the idea of knowledgeable on the left side of this arrow.

So what we can and should do is make sure we understand the connection between these two statements.

We can say that in order for a democracy to thrive,

because it requires a knowledgeable electorate,

and because a knowledgeable electorate requires access to unbiased things,

or rather information about the government,

we know that in order for a democracy to thrive,

that ultimately requires access to unbiased information.

So if you already saw that connection, then I would want you to just make that connection.

There's no need to like think of the second premise as some separate statement.

This is what we need to make sure we understand based on the combination of the two premises.

Now for space reasons, let me just move this a little bit further to the left.

So now we understand the premises and the conclusion.

The next step is to figure out what's missing from this argument.

Do these premises here establish that in order to thrive, you need effective news media?

And the answer is clearly not, because I have no idea how anything relates to effective news media.

The premises here do not say anything about effective news media.

So how can I possibly reach a conclusion that says effective news media is necessary for something?

If you are not seeing this problem in the argument,

essentially you're probably just making some assumption

that access to unbiased information about the government requires an effective news media.

But that is not something that is actually established by the premises here.

In fact, that is the thing that is missing from this argument.

If I want to go from this idea that thriving requires access to unbiased

information about the government to therefore thriving requires an effective news media,

I want to add to this argument the connection between access to unbiased and effective news media.

I want to know that if you have access to unbiased information about the government,

that requires effective news media.

This blue relationship here is a thing that is missing from this argument.

If I can add that, then I will prove this conclusion,

because thriving will then require effective news media.

So before I go to these answers, ideally I would know I am looking for this idea

or the contrapositive.

The contrapositive would be if you don't have an effective news media,

then you cannot have access to unbiased information about the government.

The right answer is either going to be this idea or it's going to be this idea.

Let's take a look at answer choice A, which says,

But this is just telling me that if we are a society with effective news media,

that is sufficient to know we are a thriving democracy.

That does not prove that in order to be a thriving democracy,

you need to have effective news media.

If you're picking A, you're essentially just picking the reverse of this idea.

A is saying if you have effective news media,

then you are going to be or are a thriving democracy.

This does not help me prove that in order to thrive,

you need to have effective news media.

So that's why answer choice A is not correct.

And by the way, if you were confused about how I understood A in that fashion,

it's really the word all here that is introducing a sufficient condition.

So all is acting like the word if here.

if an electorate has access to unbiased information about the government,

that will make the electorate knowledgeable about important political issues.

Now I'm going to immediately get rid of answer choice B

because it is not saying anything about effective news media.

Remember, I am trying to prove that if a country is thriving,

if a democracy is thriving, it has an effective news media.

But the premise is, don't tell me anything about effective news media.

Remember, this blue stuff here is not currently true based on the premises.

We don't know whether that blue stuff is true right now.

So if you are picking an answer that doesn't say anything about effective news media,

how could that answer possibly prove a conclusion about effective news media?

If you added B to the argument,

I still would have no idea what relates to effective news media.

So that is why answer choice B is not correct.

If you picked B, you are either not treating this as a sufficient assumption question.

You may have been thinking of like an inference question, maybe.

Although B would have been wrong if even if it were like a must be true question.

Or you may have been making your own assumption about the connection

between access to unbiased stuff and effective news media.

But the fundamental reason B is wrong is because it is not going to prove

that anything leads to effective news media.

Or in other words, that anything requires effective news media.

Notice that answer choice C we can get rid of for the exact same reason.

A democracy will thrive if its electorate is knowledgeable about important political issues,

but it doesn't say anything about effective news media.

So if the conclusion brings up effective news media

and the premises don't say anything about effective news media,

how can I possibly guarantee this conclusion about effective news media

with an answer that doesn't say anything about effective news media?

If you added C to this argument,

we would still have no idea what effective news media is required for.

if the electorate is exposed to biased information about the government.

And again, I'm repeating myself, but in a time situation,

a high score would be getting rid of B, C and D in split seconds.

We are trying to prove something about effective news media

that if thrive, then that implies effective news media.

The premises don't say anything about the effect about the news media.

How can an answer that doesn't say anything about effective news media

and it doesn't say anything

that would logically cover the idea of effective news media?

How can an answer that doesn't say anything about that

possibly prove this conclusion?

So that's why D is wrong.

Again, if you are tempted by B, C or D,

probably there's a misinterpretation of one of these conditionals.

Maybe you got one of these reversed.

Maybe you misidentified the conclusion.

Maybe you're not really internalizing what it means

for an answer to make the conclusion properly inferable

or otherwise must be true.

So there might be all kinds of misconceptions

that would be underlying why you'd be attracted to those three.

But the fundamental reason they're wrong

is that they do not guarantee anything about an effective news media.

without effective news media,

an electorate will not have access to unbiased information about the government.

And this is exactly right.

The meaning of answer choice E is exactly what I described earlier.

And you can think of the diagram for E either like this or like that.

Remember, those mean the same thing.

What it is saying is,

if you don't have effective news media,

then your electorate will not have access to unbiased information.

And so that description or that formulation would match up to that.

Or you could think of E as saying that effective news media is necessary

in order to have access to unbiased information.

And that's this formulation.

Either way, if you added E to the argument,

then because I already know from the premises

that thriving requires access to unbiased,

once I learn that access to unbiased requires effective news media,

that proves thriving requires effective news media.

Now, by the way, if you are confused about without

and how I'm diagramming these without statements,

I mentioned earlier that you should review the group three indicators,

the without and unless.

But just in case it helps here, let me just apply that rule.

So you split the statement into two parts.

One part is effective news media.

The other part is an electorate will not have access

to unbiased information about the government.

Now you pick one of those parts,

negate it and make it the sufficient condition.

So let me pick effective news media.

I'm going to negate that and say,

if you don't have effective news media,

then the other part of the statement must be true.

Then the electorate will not have access to unbiased information.

I could have done it the other way too.

I could have picked the second half,

negated that and made it the sufficient condition.

And so that would look like this.

If an electorate does have access,

so if an electorate does have access,

then the other half of the statement is true.

Effective news media.

So that's how I'm translating what E says into these ideas.

Ultimately, though, you want to be so practiced

with words like without and unless

that when you read E, you can read it as saying

effective news media is necessary for access to unbiased information.