Unlike newspapers in the old days, today's newspapers and televised news programs are full of stories about murders a...

shunhe on December 23, 2020

Hi @priyap59,

Thanks for the question! So first let’s take a look at the stimulus. We’re told that unlike newspapers of the old days, the ones nowadays have stories of murder and assaults. So, concludes the author, violent crime nowadays is out of control.??Now we want something that casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion; in other words, this is a weaken question. (A) weakens the conclusion that violent crime is out of control nowadays. It’s not that violent crime is actually out of control, it’s just that the crime that existed is now covered better than it used to be.

(B) is wrong because we don’t care about other cities, we just care about the author’s city.

(C) is wrong because we don’t care about inside neighborhoods or outside neighborhoods, that’s not something that’s distinguished in the stimulus.

(D) is wrong because we don’t care about how much of violent crime murder is, we just care about violent crime in general.

(E) is wrong because the importance of news magazines, versus newspapers, is not relevant. Even if you were to interpret that they’re the same thing, you’d have to assume quite a bit to say this weakens, and (A) weakens much more directly.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.