Q16 - public biases by media

[soyeonjeon]

Why can't E be the answer?

I don't think the stimulus necessarily leads to the conclusion as stated in A.
I can't nail down why E is incorrect as the conclusion of the stimulus.
Is it because the public may use the stereotype formerly incorporated into reporting as the measure for judging the contracting fact? thus responds in the opposite manner, that is criticizing it rather than believing it?

What question type is this? and What should I do to not get this type of question wrong next time?

Is it safe to think that the conclusions should in general be broader and more general than the stimulus? thus E has a less chance of being the answer to begin with? or is that a risky assumption to make?

I find this quite difficult to tackle.

Thanks in advance.

[bbirdwell]

I'd say treat it as an inference question. Choose the choice that is most provable. Typically, we can eliminate choices that are way too specific, leading to a sort of bland, neutral-ish answer choice that is pretty much directly supported by the facts at hand.

The first step, then, is to make sure we really pin down those facts.

1. Public is aware that media has bias
2. Public distrusts media
3. To evaluate media report, the public refers to the media.

So we can quickly tell that the last sentence is important. There's some kind of circle-ish reasoning thing going on, right? It's like "to judge the media, we use the media. And we don't trust the media." Hmmm. Sounds like maybe this situation is problematic.

It's worth taking a second or two to digest it before moving on to the choices. That's a big thing on LR in general - don't rush to the choices thinking that they'll help you understand. Practice understanding first, and then move to the choices.

On a first pass through the choices, we should aggressively eliminate conclusions that are too detailed or far out for us to support.

(A) Hmm. Sort of matches the last sentence, but who says it's hard or easy? Probly not it.

(B) According to some people, this is true! But this author makes no mention of politics whatsoever. Eliminate!

(C) Interesting and believable? Eliminate.

(D) Important? Eliminate.

(E) Take a minute to parse this one out. Here's what it says:
Public is predisposed to believe reports that contradict stereotypes. Stereotypes? Contradictions? Predisposition to belief? None of these are supported by the facts at hand. Eliminate.

Shoot! We pretty much eliminated them all. Now, we'll go back through and loosen up a bit, and we'll see if, when we stretch our assumptive power very conservatively, we can arrive at one of the answers.

(A) "If there is bias in the news, it'd be hard to tell." Match this up with our stimulus: people use the media to evaluate the media. This answer is correct! If we use a biased source to evaluate a report, it could easily be "difficult to discern." In order to evaluate a report (to discern a bias), we'd prefer an objective (unbiased) source to compare it with. Without that unbiased source, discernment would be hindered (difficult).

This is most reasonably supported (requires the smallest "leap" in logic) choice we have. Hope that helps!