Advertisers are often criticized for their unscrupulous manipulation of people’s tastes and wants. There is evidence, however, that some advertisers are motivated by moral as well as financial considerations. A particular publication decided to change its image from being a family newspaper to concentrating on sex and violence, thus appealing to a this must have been because they morally disapproved of publishing salacious material.
What this question is testing
Conclusion
The author wants to prove some advertisers care about morality, not just money.
Evidence
The proof: a paper went edgy, advertisers left, so the author says they must have left because they were morally offended.
Evaluate
Pause here. There is an obvious alternative explanation: the new audience might not buy what those advertisers were selling. Imagine a baby-food company advertising in a family newspaper. If the paper suddenly fills with adult content, the baby-food company is not pulling out because they are appalled — they are pulling out because their customers are not reading the paper anymore. That is financial, not moral.
So to make the moral story stick, we need to remove the financial motive from the picture. If we can show that staying with the new publication would have made the advertisers more money than leaving, then financial self-interest predicted them to stay — but they left anyway. That points to a non-financial motive.
Goal
Find an answer that takes financial self-interest off the table — by showing the advertisers had a money reason to stay but left anyway.
Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.