PT120 · S3 · Q16 In the last election, 89

Since this answer begins with a presumes / takes for granted, we can ask ourselves whether the author was definitely assuming the idea that follows. Did this author's argument need to assume that both candidates received precisely the same amount of coverage? Of course not. That language would almost always be too strong to be correct when talking about a Necessary Assumption, as we are in this answer choice. The argument doesn't care if the challenger received 30 hrs of coverage and the incumbent received 31 hrs of coverage, or if the challenger received 50 hrs and the incumbent received 25 hrs. The curious fact is about the proportion of negative coverage, not about the raw number of minutes of coverage.

Since this answer begins with a presumes / takes for granted, we can ask ourselves whether the idea that follows is a Necessary Assumption. Did this author's argument need to assume that when bias influences reporting, it is detrimental to news coverage 100% of the time? Of course not. That language would almost always be too strong to be correct when talking about a Necessary Assumption, as we are in this answer choice. The argument doesn't care if bias is detrimental to news coverage 100% of the time vs. 99% of the time (or even 0% of the time). The argument is talking about whether the coverage was good / bad or whether it was degraded / elevated by bias. The argument is only assessing whether or not there was bias.

Since this answer begins with a fails to consider / ignores the possibility, we can ask ourselves if the idea that follows would be some weakening idea or potential objection. Would it hurt the argument to say, "The electorate's voting behavior isn't significantly affected by the content of the coverage"? No, that would only weaken if the author had been arguing that the biased coverage ended up swaying the voting in the election. But this author isn't ever talking about whether or not biased reporting had any effect on voters. The author is only trying to prove that the reporting was biased; she never talks about possible repercussions of the reporting being biased.

Since this answer begins with a fails to consider / ignores the possibility, we can ask ourselves if the idea that follows would be some weakening idea or potential objection. Would it hurt the argument to say, "Reporters generally fear more the prospect of losing access to incumbents than to challengers"? It's a little tempting. We could try to turn this into an Alternate Explanation. Maybe the coverage skewed 54% / 30% not because reporters were biased in favor of the incumbent winning but because they didn't want to lose access to the incumbent by publishing a negative story about her. Is it common sense that if a reporter is more fearful of losing access to someone, then they won't have as much negative coverage of that reporter? Somewhat. But the alternate explanation in (B) is much more solidly in the realm of common sense: "if there's less negative news worth reporting about someone, will there be less negative coverage about that person"? Sure, that's way more straightforward.