LSAT 135 – Section 1 – Question 05

LSAT 135 - Section 1 - Question 05

December 2011

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Request new explanation

Target time: 1:03

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT135 S1 Q05
+LR
Weaken +Weak
Sampling +Smpl
A
1%
152
B
1%
153
C
3%
159
D
92%
165
E
3%
156
129
139
149
 +Easier 146.098 +SubsectionMedium

In its coverage of a controversy regarding a proposal to build a new freeway, a television news program showed interviews with several people who would be affected by the proposed freeway. Of the interviews shown, those conducted with people against the new freeway outnumbered those conducted with people for it two to one. The television program is therefore biased against the proposed freeway.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The conclusion is a hypothesis for why there were so many more anti-freeway interviews than pro-freeway interviews: the TV program is biased against the proposed freeway.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the TV program cherry-picked which interviews to show in order to skew the numbers toward the anti-freeway opinions. This means the author must assume that, in the wider population, a larger percentage of people are actually pro-freeway than the TV program would have us believe. The author may assume that there is a more even split between the pro-freeway and anti-freeway crowds, or he may assume that the pro-freeway crowd outright outnumbers the anti-freeway crowd.

A
Most of the people who watched the program were aware of the freeway controversy beforehand.
What viewers were aware of is irrelevant to the question of whether the TV program was biased in what it chose to present to those viewers.
B
Most viewers of television news programs do not expect those programs to be completely free of bias.
Viewers’ expectations of bias do not help to answer the question of whether this TV program is, in actuality, biased. That most viewers expect some level of bias provides no reason to believe that, contrary to the conclusion, this TV program is actually unbiased.
C
In the interviews, the people against the new freeway expressed their opinions with more emotion than the people for the freeway did.
If anything, this strengthens the conclusion. Showing impassioned opposition to the freeway on one hand, and relatively mild support for the freeway on the other, could suggest that the TV program is indeed biased against the freeway.
D
Before the program aired, over twice as many people were against building the freeway than were in favor of it.
This means an even higher percentage of people are anti-freeway than what the TV program showed. This denies the author’s assumption that the TV program aired a misleadingly high percentage of anti-freeway opinions. In reality, the program underrepresented anti-freeway opinions.
E
The business interests of the television station that produced the program would be harmed by the construction of a new freeway.
The TV station’s business interests have no bearing on the argument. The argument is about whether the numbers of pro- and anti-freeway interviews shown should, or should not, lead us to believe that the TV program is biased.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 135 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply