Unlike newspapers in the old days,

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct69% picked this

   Newspapers and televised news programs have more comprehensive coverage of violent crime than newspapers did

   Why this is right

   This provides an alternate explanation for why violent crime stories are more frequent in today's media. It's not necessarily that violent crime is more rampant, but that media coverage has expanded, making it seem more prevalent. In other words, the paper is full of murder stories not because there are more murders but because a given murder nowadays is given more comprehensive coverage and so it takes up more space in the paper than a murder report would have back in the day. More pages per crime, not more crimes occurring. This could also mean they cover more types of violent crime than they used to. So it would be "more types of crime reported on, not a greater number of crimes occurring".

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   69%
2. B

   Opposite (if anything)2% picked this

   National data show that violent crime is out of control everywhere, not just in

   If anything, this could potentially be used to argue that violent crime is indeed out of control, aligning with the conclusion rather than opposing it.

   2%
3. C

   Irrelevant Comparison5% picked this

   Police records show that people experience more violent crimes in their own neighborhoods than they

   The argument doesn't care where crimes occur. The conclusion is saying that crime is out of control everywhere in the city. We're trying to assess whether current crime is worse than past crime. This answer is about whether nearby current crime is worse than distant current vrime.

   5%
4. D

   Irrelevant Comparison13% picked this

   Murder comprised a larger proportion of violent crimes in the old days than

   The argument doesn't care what proportion of all violent crimes are murder. It's making a claim about whether the entire category of violent crime has greatly increased recently. The argument hasn't made any claims or assumptions about how big the different pieces of the violent crime pie are.

   13%
5. E

   No Impact11% picked this

   News magazines play a more important role today in informing the public about crime than they did

   This might seem like an alternate explanation for why violent crime is reported on these days. However, this is about news magazines, whereas the curious fact was about newspapers and TV news shows. This answer doesn't offer any explanation for why newspapers and news TV shows are so much more full of violent crime stories than they used to be. We would have to assume that "if magazines play a more important role, then so do papers and tv shows, and if papers/TV play a more important role then they will start reporting more on crime, even if it's the same amount of crime as before". The correct answer directly gives us "they start reporting more on crime, even if it's the same amount of crime as before", without requiring as many assumptions.

   11%