Logical Reasoning

PT144 · S2 · Q15 Journalism's purpose is to inform

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Journalism's purpose is to inform people about matters relevant to the choices they must make.

Setup

The purpose of journalism is to inform people about stuff relevant to the choices they have to make.

Pivot (yet) People consume journalism precisely because it contains sensationalistic gossip about people who no relevance to their lives.

Evaluate

Logical Completion is a subtype of Most Supported, so our thinking task is still to combine claims together. Since there is a big Pivot word, we surmise that we're probably supposed to Reconcile the Pivot, i.e. think of a safely worded takeaway that combines the before-pivot with the after-pivot idea.

The purpose of journalism is to inform us about stuff relevant to our lives, but the reason people often consume journalism is to hear gossip about people who aren't relevant to their lives.

Can we combine those to say that "journalism isn't living up to its purpose"?

That's probably a little too strong. After all, you might buy a newspaper for the sake of a gossip column but then read the rest of it and end up getting informed about relevant stuff.

So a safer synthesis would be something like .

Goal

The final sentence begins with "the gossip in journalism", so we would need to rejigger our synthesis to match that subject noun.

?

15.

Which one of the following most logically completes the argument?

  1. Correct

    is at least sometimes included

    Why this is right

    This has lovably weak language, but it's otherwise a surprising correct answer to come home to. We know, of course, that this gossip does not serve the purpose of journalism. So is it fair to call the gossip nonjournalistic? Yeah, that seems fair. If the purpose of a legal will is to instruct the executor on how to divvy up one's estate, then someone who puts an inspiring poem in their will put it in there for nonlegal reasons. Why would any newspaper or news tv program include sensationalistic gossip about people their readers will never meet and whose business is of little relevance to their lives? After all, the purpose of journalism is to inform the audience about stuff that's relevant to them. One plausible explanation comes from the second sentence, which is saying that the reason an audience even consumes journalism is often because of this irrelevant gossip. So there is probably at least one occasion in which tv or print journalism includes irrelevant gossip for nonjournalistic reasons.

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

    71% picked this

  2. prevents those news media from

    Too Strong

    This is the right idea, but phrased too strongly. We only know that people often consume journalism for irrelevant gossip, not that they always do. There's plenty of room in these statements for people to often consume journalism to be informed about relevant matters. So journalism can still be achieving its purpose with those people. And even the people who tune in or buy a paper to read the irrelevant gossip might also end up consuming relevant info. Finally, the causal verb "prevents" isn't really appropriate, since the gossip isn't actively thwarting people from becoming informed about relevant things. In fact, since the gossip gets people in the door, it's actually facilitating the news media having a chance to achieve its purpose.

    21% picked this

  3. is more relevant to people's

    Unsupported Comparison: now vs. past

    There's nothing in this passage suggesting that the relevance of gossip has changed past vs. present.

    2% picked this

  4. should not be thought of

    Opposite, if anything

    The gossip seems to be precisely for the sake of entertaining / baiting an audience. It's certainly not to inform them, so entertainment is kind of the only other option with media. We consume media to be informed or entertained, for the most part.

    1% picked this

  5. is of no value to

    Too Strong: no value

    We can say that the gossip seems unrelated to the purpose of journalism, but we can't say it has zero value to any person interested in journalism. You might have a person who loves reading the paper for its relevant information, but also finds some entertainment value in reading the gossipy stuff.

    6% picked this

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