LSAT 120 – Section 3 – Question 16

LSAT 120 - Section 3 - Question 16

October 2005

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT120 S3 Q16	+LR	Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw Causal Reasoning +CausR	A 9% 159 B 80% 164 C 2% 151 D 7% 156 E 1% 157	139 149 158	+Medium	146.629 +SubsectionMedium

In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent. The content of news programs reveals that reporters allowed the personal biases reflected in this voting pattern to affect their news coverage: 54 percent of coverage concerning the challenger was negative, compared with only 30 percent of that concerning the incumbent.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis

The author concludes that reporters’ personal biases affected news coverage of an election. Why? Because most of them voted for the incumbent, and there was less negative coverage of the incumbent than the challenger.

Identify and Describe Flaw

The basis for the author’s conclusion is that reporters devoted more negative coverage to the challenger than the incumbent. But what if the challenger deserved more negative coverage than the incumbent? If that were the case, the media would be devoting more negative coverage to the challenger, even if reporters were completely unbiased.

presumes, without providing justification, that both candidates received equal amounts of coverage overall

The author never presumes this: his argument is about the ratio of positive/negative coverage for each candidate, not the total amount of coverage (e.g. number of newspaper articles) they received. The ratio isn’t affected by the total.

ignores the possibility that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent

If this were the case, reporters might devote more negative coverage to the challenger than the incumbent—even if they’re completely unbiased. This undermines the author’s conclusion that the discrepancy in negative coverage is evidence of bias.

presumes, without providing justification, that allowing biases to influence reporting is always detrimental to the resulting news coverage

The author doesn’t presume this: he’s alleging the existence of bias, not making a value judgment about its effects.

ignores the possibility that the electorate’s voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates

The conclusion is about bias in news coverage itself; the potential effects of news coverage on voting are irrelevant. We’re looking for factors that affect coverage, not factors that coverage affects.

ignores the possibility that reporters generally fear losing access to incumbents more than they fear losing access to challengers

If this were true, it would, if anything, support the author’s argument: it suggests that reporters would be biased against challengers.

LSAT 120 – Section 3 – Question 16

LSAT 120 - Section 3 - Question 16

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LSAT PrepTest 120 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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