(A) is wrong because it directly convravenes the journalist’s conclusion. According to (A), the journalist’s decision was unethical because they omitted facts (the government stopped the food shipments) that would, if included, change people’s impression compared to what the journalist actually reported.

In other words, the journalist filed an article that was silent on the question of who or what caused the starvation. If they had included evidence that the government caused the starvation, people would get a meaningfully different impression.

(B)’s logic makes the journalist’s decision unethical because they failed to report facts (the government caused the starvation) that tend to exonerate the rebels.

This line of reasoning is a bit uncomfortable because it requires treating “the government did cause the starvation” to mean “the rebels didn’t cause the starvation,” which is literally a common fallacy (I call it “why not both?”).

Still, the journalist’s report made the active decision not to implicate the rebels, so a report laying blame on the government and staying silent on the rebels would tend to exonerate the rebels.

There’s another angle on (B) that argues it introduces more constraints than (D), but my guess is this “fails to support the journalist’s conclusion” line of reasoning is what the testwriters had in mind.

(C) is wrong because it directly contravenes the journalist’s conclusion. According to (C), the journalist’s decision was unethical because they made a report even though it had been censored to remove information unfavorable to the government.

(D) justifies the journalist’s conclusion. It starts with the broad claim that it’s ethical in general to report known facts, which the reporter did. So far so good.

Then it lays out one additional constraint: if you’re gonna make a censored report, you gotta warn people. Our journalist made a censored report, but they did warn people, so we’re good there too.

The difference between (D)’s one additional constraint and (E)’s two additional constraints suffices to pick (D) over (E), even if (E) also justifies the journalist’s conclusion (which is debatable).

(E) starts with the broad claim that it’s ethical in general to report known facts, which the reporter did. So far so good.

Then it lays out two additional constraints: if you’re gonna make a censored report, 1) you gotta warn people, and 2) the facts you report can’t give a misleading impression.

You could argue the reported facts by themselves (describing the starvation while remaining silent on its cause) give a misleading impression, making the journalist’s decision unethical. Honestly, though, that’s debatable.

We don’t need to hang our “(E) is wrong” hat on that, though, because the difference between (D)’s one additional constraint and (E)’s two additional constraints suffices to pick (D) over (E) regardless of whether (E) justifies the argument’s conclusion.