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

Mehran on September 4, 2018

Hi @ddupray, thanks for your post. This is an Argument Completion question. The stimulus is structured to lead to a conclusion, but that conclusion is only partially stated in the stimulus itself ("Obviously, then, the sensationalist gossip contained in newspapers and television news programs . . . ").

OK, we need to look to the stimulus itself in order to properly complete this argument. We are first told that the purpose of journalism "is to inform people about matters relevant to the choices they might make." But then we are also told that newspapers and TV news programs often "contain sensationalistic gossip about people whom they will never meet and whose business is of little relevance to their lives."

Taking these two pieces of information together, we can choose answer choice (A), which says that the sensationalist gossip contained in newspapers and television news programs "is at least sometimes included for nonjournalistic reasons." Yes, this makes sense - because we know from the stimulus that such information does not further journalism's purpose, as that is defined in the stimulus.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional or more specific questions.

kbernard on July 7, 2020

I understand why A, but why not E?

aseikhon11 on August 27, 2020

Why is E incorrect?

alicat6 on September 20, 2020

I believe E is too strong. Saying "no value" is an absolute, and on the LSAT you should be weary of those answer choices.

Anthony-Wurst on July 13, 2021

I am also intereted in a better explanation of why E is not the correct answer. It seems to more precisely address the premises. Answer choice A goies outside the boundaries of the information shared in the passage. The passage never deals with any 'nonjournalistic' reasons. Thus, it seems that E is the better answer choice as it conforms more closely to the strict boundaries of the passage. Can we get an explanation as to why A is superior to E?