Producer: It has been argued that, while the government should not censor television shows, the public should boycot...

Mehran on January 15, 2017

@Louis let's break down the argument.

The Producer's conclusion is "But this would be censorship nonetheless . . . "

What is "this"? "The public should boycott the advertisers of shows that promote violence and erode our country's value."

And why is this censorship nonetheless? Because "if the public boycotted the advertisers, then they would cancel their advertisements, causing some shows to go off the air; the result would be a restriction of the shows that the public can watch."

This is a Strengthen with Sufficient Premise question, so we are looking for the answer choice that 100% guarantees the conclusion here.

Notice the gap in this argument. The premise is that the public boycott will result in a restriction of the shows that the public can watch.

The conclusion, however, is that this is censorship.

So we want to connect this premise to the conclusion in order to have the conclusion be properly inferred.

(E) says, "Any action that leads to a restriction of what the public can view is censorship."

We know "any" introduces a sufficient condition so (E) would be diagrammed as follows:

LRPV ==> C
not C ==> not LRPV

Since public boycott invokes the sufficient condition here, i.e. by restricting the shows that the public can watch, we can guarantee the conclusion of the argument that this is censorship.

So (E) would be the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.